Pam Bondi was just fired by Trump. Here's how the stock market has fared since her infamous 'Dow is over 50,000' comment.

MW Pam Bondi was just fired by Trump. Here's how the stock market has fared since her infamous 'Dow is over 50,000' comment.

By Joseph Adinolfi and Tomi Kilgore

Spoiler: Not great

Seven weeks before President Donald Trump announced her departure from the Justice Department via social-media post, Attorney General Pam Bondi made a remark about the Dow Jones Industrial Average during a contentious hearing before the House Judiciary Committee that elicited laughter from Democrats and, later, a torrent of online comments and then memes.

Amid an exchange with House Democrats including Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland about her department's handling of Jeffrey Epstein files and investigations, Bondi suddenly shifted to a discussion of the performance of the U.S. stock market.

"Because [of] Donald Trump ... the Dow, the Dow right now, is over ... the Dow is over 50,000. ... I don't know why you're laughing, you're a great stock trader as I hear, Raskin, the Dow is over 50,000 right now, the S&P [500] at almost 7,000 and the Nasdaq smashing records. Americans 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming," Bondi said, adding: "That's what we should be talking about."

At the time, many wondered whether Bondi might have inadvertently top-ticked the market. In retrospect, her remark, made on Feb. 11, has marked at least a local top, as Wall Street professionals would call it. Since the closing bell rang that day, the Dow DJIA has fallen by 7.5% to 46,370, as of afternoon trading on Thursday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The blue-chip average registered a closing peak of 50,188.14 on Feb. 10, a day before Bondi's testimony.

Joseph Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, told MarketWatch that the comment immediately got people talking about whether Bondi had "jinxed" the market.

"Certainly it had nothing to do with the market selloff - it was just kind of one of those jinxes, if you want to call it that," Saluzzi said. "It was like the magazine cover curse - as soon as that happened, it was like, 'Oh, boy,' and, sure enough, we've been down since."

From the archive (December 2025): Investors fear Time just jinxed the AI stock-market rally with its 2025 person of the year

At the time Bondi apparently sought to redirect questioning by a congressional panel charged with overseeing her department's work toward a discussion of the U.S. equities market, the Dow indeed was riding high. Money, at the time, had been flowing away from previously highflying tech stocks like Broadcom $(AVGO)$, Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft $(MSFT)$ and into "old economy" blue-chip names like Caterpillar $(CAT)$ and McDonald's $(MCD)$.

Since then, the start of a war in Iran has sent global stock markets lurching lower. Although the S&P 500 SPX managed to outperform many international rivals in March, it still registered its worst monthly showing in a year. Other major indexes, including the Dow, also struggled.

U.S. stocks were heading lower on Thursday, with the S&P 500, Nasdaq COMP and the Dow in the red in recent trade, according to FactSet data. Although each was on track to snap a five-week losing streak. The U.S. equity market is closed on Friday.

MarketWatch reached out to the White House and asked whether Bondi's comment about the Dow and retirement accounts that day accurately represented the administration's economic agenda. The White House responded by directing MarketWatch to an X post from press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

-Joseph Adinolfi -Tomi Kilgore

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April 02, 2026 15:28 ET (19:28 GMT)

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