US stocks close lower after Michael Flynn report sends Wall Street on wild ride

By  Trend

Stocks finished lower on Friday after a report that Michael Flynn was directed by President Trump to talk to Russians sent investors on a wild ride, CNBC reported.

ABC News reported that Flynn, the former national security adviser, would testify that he was directed to make contact with Russians during the presidential campaign in 2016. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his postelection contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.

ABC said later in an updated report that Flynn will say Trump asked him to make contact with Russia "initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria."

In a statement, Flynn said he agreed to "cooperate with the Special Counsel's Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country."

"If you believe the market has been rallying in the last 13 months [on Trump, this report] potentially unravels all of that," said Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities. "Markets don't like uncertainty and this is the ultimate uncertainty."

The major averages hit their session lows on the report, with the Dow Jones industrial average briefly dropping 350.45 points before closing 40.76 points lower at 24,231.59.

The S&P 500 declined 0.2 percent to close at 2,642.22 and fell as much 1.4 percent. In what amounted to the wildest trading day since the election, the S&P 500 traded in a range of 1.71 percent, the widest since Nov. 9, 2016, said Frank Cappelleri, executive director at Instinet.

The Nasdaq composite lagged, pulling back 0.4 percent to 6,847.59; it had dropped as much as 1.99 percent at its session lows.