U.S. Attorney General Bondi was dismissed. Did his comment that "the Dow Jones surpassing 50,000 points" cause the U.S. stock market to stumble?

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced on social media that Attorney General Pam Bondi would be leaving the Department of Justice seven weeks earlier, Bondi had made a remark about the Dow Jones Industrial Average during a tense hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Her comment not only prompted Democrats to burst into laughter, but also sparked heated online discussion and evolved into all kinds of meme images.

As Bondi was clashing with House Democrats such as Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland over how the Department of Justice handled the files and investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein, Bondi suddenly shifted gears and began talking about the performance of the U.S. stock market.

“Because Donald Trump… the Dow, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, now… the Dow Jones Industrial Average is above… the Dow is now above 50,000 points… I don’t know what you’re laughing at. I hear you’re a pretty good stock trader, Raskin. The Dow is now above 50,000 points. The S&P 500 is approaching 7,000 points, and the Nasdaq index is also setting new records. Americans’ 401(k)s and retirement savings are surging,” Bondi said, adding: “This is what we should be talking about.”

At the time, many speculated that Bondi may have inadvertently called the market’s top. Looking back, her remarks published on February 11 at least signaled a “temporary top,” as described by Wall Street professionals. According to Dow Jones Market Data, since that close, as of after the market’s close this Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 7.5%, to 46,370 points. The blue-chip index also set a closing high of 50,188.14 on February 10—the day before Bondi testified.

Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of Themis Trading, said that as soon as the remark was made, people immediately started discussing whether Bondi had brought “bad luck” to the market.

“Of course, it has nothing to do with market selloffs—if you want to call it something, it’s just the jinx effect,” Saluzzi said. “It’s like the ‘magazine cover curse’—the moment that line is said, everyone thinks, ‘Oh no, something bad is coming.’ Sure enough, after that, the market kept falling.”

At the time, Bondi was clearly trying to deflect questions from a specialist panel in Congress responsible for overseeing the Department of Justice, shifting the focus to discussion of the U.S. stock market. And at that time, the Dow was indeed climbing steadily. Money was moving out of tech stocks that had been leading the charge—such as Broadcom, Nvidia, and Microsoft—and into “old economy” blue chips like Caterpillar and McDonald’s.

After that, the outbreak of the Iran war left global stock markets shaky and sent them sharply lower. Although the S&P 500 performed better in March than many other international market indexes, it still recorded the worst monthly performance in a year. Other major indexes, including the Dow, also performed poorly.

On Thursday, U.S. stocks closed mixed: the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite edged higher, while the Dow closed down. Still, all three major indexes ended a streak of declines lasting five consecutive weeks. The U.S. stock market is closed on Friday.

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