The U.S. stock market rose when the director of the FBI announced Tuesday that he would recommend that the Department of Justice not pursue charges against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The slight bump in the S&P 500 began as Director James Comey announced that “no intentional misconduct” had been found during the FBI's investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. The momentary rise continued as Comey said that the FBI would pass the case along to the Department of Justice for a final decision, but the bureau would not recommend charges.
Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal spotted the move:
Paul Krugman said not-so-cryptically that this was simply investors saying that anything that decreases the chance that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump will win the general election is good news:
Of course, there doesn’t need to be a clear reason for stock market movements — in fact, there often isn’t. But in this case, given the timing of the market's increase and the news that was breaking, it seems like the stock market was making a brief statement that good news for Clinton is good news for financial markets.
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.