Fox News didn't show live stocks ticker after Trump's tariffs announcement — markets were closed

After U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs announcement on April 2, 2025, rumors began to spread that right-leaning cable news channel Fox News had removed a live stocks ticker from the bottom of its screen to hide the fact that stocks were tumbling on planned duties on imports. 

For example, writer Don Winslow tagged Fox on X to ask why the network had removed the ticker for the first time in three decades (archived):

The post had gained 3.9 million views and 228,000 likes as of this writing. The same claim appeared on X several times as well as on Reddit. Further, Snopes readers searched the site seeking confirmation. 

The reality is that Fox News has never included a live stocks ticker in its graphics on a continuous basis. Further, at the time of Trump's announcement, the markets were already closed. For these reasons, we have deemed the claim false. 

"FOX News Channel has never featured a continuous stock market ticker throughout its history and claims that it was removed are inaccurate," a spokesperson for the channel said in an email. 

On April 2, the day Trump made the announcement, Trump spoke after the markets closed at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). At that moment, as stocks were no longer trading, no live ticker appeared on the screen. However, the live broadcast did include a static ticker for the Dow Jones at closing that day, which remained up for most of Trump's announcement.

In addition, the screen capture most often shared with this claim showed Fox News presenter Kayleigh McEnany, a host of the show "Outnumbered," on April 3, the day after the tariffs announcement. A review of the episode showed that the live ticker for the Dow Jones index appeared at the end of the episode but did not remain throughout. This demonstrates that while Fox News does intermittently include live tickers for stocks in its broadcasts throughout the day, the company does not keep it up continuously.

To further verify this discontinuity, Snopes watched one hour of the channel's livestream on April 4. In that span of time, one live ticker appeared, but it was for Fox Weather, not the stock market. The rest of the broadcast featured static banners providing context for each story the shows covered.

Further, we examined Fox News videos aired before April 2 and found that on many of them, a live stocks ticker did not appear continuously. One segment, covering former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, appeared on YouTube on March 28. Another segment from March 31 covered the visit of Elon Musk, tech magnate and public face of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, and also did not present a live ticker for stocks. In 2017, a 14-minute segment of the talk show "The Five" also lacked a live stocks ticker.

Fox Business, on the other hand, keeps live tickers running for various indexes or static tickers showing the indexes' status at closing. For example, at 4 p.m. on April 2 — moments before Trump was due to announce the tariffs — Fox Business presented the same ticker that appeared on the screen during the live Fox News broadcast of the tariffs announcement. However, even in the few minutes after the top of the hour, the tickers disappeared to announce upcoming guests. As of April 4, two days after Trump's announcement of sweeping reciprocal tariffs, Fox Business tickers indicated stocks were falling.

Fox News received criticism before for removing a live ticker that appeared favorable to Trump's opponents. In August 2024, during the presidential contest, the X account of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris' campaign posted a clip of Fox News removing a live ticker that showed the Dow Jones index had hit 40,000 points during a Trump address (archived):