clear in the letter that those chairmen sent to secretary pompeo last week that obstruction will be what this is. if you do not send the information that is requested to congress. so they re not playing games anymore with secretary pompeo. we ll see, frankly, who blinks first. michael, good to talk to you. thank you for joining me . a senior fellow at the center for american progress. we have breaking news. moments ago, now-former congressman chris collins pleaded guilty in an insider trading case in a federal courtroom in manhattan. pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of making false statements. each count comes with a maximum sentence of five years plus three years supervised release and up to $250,000 in fines. the new york republican was accused of leaking confidential information about a biopharmaceutical company immunotherapeutics limited which enabled his son and another individual to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock
pelosi is racking up the votes to serve as the next speaker. if cleared as expected, she will lead democrats as they wield the house oversight and subpoena powers. what will the democrats do with it? next. first, our other big story. the dow has been dropping all morning. not because of a glitch as president trump claimed about december stock losses. we ll look at the real reasons. take your razor, yup. up and down, never side to side, shaquem, you got it? come on stay focused. hard work baby, it gonna pay off.
than 260 points, gaining more than 1%. asian markets appeared to take it all in stride. the nikkei closed down. the shanghai and hang seng were both up slightly. so clearly there is volatility in play. our alison kosik has more on what to look for down the road. reporter: hey there. stocks staged a huge comeback. the dow erased a 611-point decline, closing up 260 points. it is an almost 900-point swing, a day after the dow made history, jumping more than 1,000 points. the trading session was marked by heavy volatility as has been the month of december. the dow has made triple digit moves in 12 of the months 18 trading sessions. the year-end gyrations come after heavy stock losses in the market overall. the dow was down thousands of points from its october peak. the nasdaq is not far from a bear market. that s a 20% drop from a recent high. year-end positioning is responsible for a lot of the
month of december. the dow has actually made triple-digit moves in 12 of the month s 18 trading sessions. the year-end gyrations come after heavy stock losses in the market overall. the dow is down thousand of points from its october peak. the nasdaq not far from a bear market. that s a 20% drop from a recent high. year-end positioning, repositioning is responsible for a lot of volatility we re seeing as investors are squaring their books as they close out the year, but once the calendar changes from 2018 to 2019, investors are going to be look for clarity and certainty on a number of issues including how many times the federal reserve is expected to raise rates, whether the trade situation between the u.s. and china will be resolved, and if there s going to be any stability coming out of the white house when it comes to wall street. jim? alison, should we expect more of the same tomorrow? is this volatility going to continue for a while? i know you can t make any hard predictions he
we saw the dow jumping over 1,000 points. this is par for the course when you see something like that happen. december has been volatile in general. there have been 18 trading sessions and 11 of those the dow made a triple-digit move. it has been a volatile session up and down. the end of the year gyrations are after we have seen several stock losses. the s&p 500 and nasdaq enter bear market territory. the dow fell 4500 points from the peak in october. you see the moves that the indeces have been making and what you are seeing happen now are trying to square the books before they close on 2018. dana? interesting. thank you. put this into perspective for us. why are we seeing such