Thursday, April 06, 2006

Stocks flat as market mulls Iraq leak news

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were flat on Thursday as traders had mixed views of news that court papers showed President Bush authorized a leak to the media of classified material about Iraq.

...

"The news that Bush was aware of or maybe authorized the (intelligence) leak is what's causing the weakness in the market," said Tom Schrader, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets.

But some traders took comfort from the fact that the court documents did not seem to link the President directly to a leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent.

"The market is reassured that Bush didn't do anything wrong," said Adam Tracy, director of listed trading at Thomas Weisel Partners.

No comments: