US stocks fell, with the S&P 500 falling 0.4% after sinking as much as 1.1% earlier in the day. the Dow The Jones Industrial Average fell 179 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite lost 0.9%.

The value of the US dollar rallied, but only after swinging several times after the nomination of Trump in Kevin Warsh. And some of the wildest action is again in the precious metals marketwhere gold and silver prices fell after their stellar run last year.

Whoever heads the Fed has a huge influence on the economy and markets around the world by helping to dictate where the US central bank moves interest rates. Such decisions raise or weigh prices for all types of investments, while the Fed tries to maintain the US job market without allowing inflation to get out of control. Trump has pushed for lower interest rates, which usually help goose the economy but can also lead to higher inflation.

One fear in financial markets is that the Fed will lose some of its independence because of Trump. That fear in turn helped drive up gold prices and weaken the value of the US dollar last year.

The long-held assumption is that the Fed should operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make moves that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. Lowering inflation to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and slow the economy for a while.

The big question is what Warsh’s nomination, which still needs approval from the Senate, means for Fed independence.

Warsh was once a governor on the Fed’s board, so investors are familiar with him. That could also mean that Warsh is familiar with and hopes to keep the Fed institution as an independent operator. And while with the Fed, Warsh criticized the central bank’s bond purchases to keep interest rates low.

Some on Wall Street took Warsh’s nomination as an encouraging signal for an independent Fed to keep rates high, if necessary. Besides slowing the economy, higher interest rates lower stock prices.

But Warsh has also recently been critical of the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, and expressed support for lower rates.

“In fact, Warsh is not the Fed’s guy, he is Trump’s guy, and has shadowed Trump on monetary policy almost every step since 2009,” according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed to cut rates any time soon,” but it could indicate that he may be more willing to do so when the time comes.

On Wall Street, stocks of metal miners fell as the price of gold fell 11.4% to $4,745.10 an ounce. The price of gold suddenly ran out of momentum after a huge rally in which it almost doubled in 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday and was near $5,600 at one point on Thursday.

Silver, which has a similar, jaw-dropping tear, falls more. It decreased by 31.4%.

Prices of gold and other precious metals surged as investors looked for safer places for their money while weighing a number of risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, threats of tariffs and heavy debts by governments around the world.

The surprising pause may have been inevitable given how far and how fast the metal’s price has risen over the past year. Nothing goes up in price forever.

A drop in metal prices on Friday helped send the miner’s stock up Newmont less than 11.5%. Freeport-McMoRananother miner, dropped 7.5%.

Helping limit market losses Teslawhich increased by 3.3%. It rebounded after falling on Thursday despite delivering better profit reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Apple added 0.5% after iPhone maker reported stronger gains for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 29.98 points to 6,939.03. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 179.09 to 48,892.47, and the Nasdaq composite fell 223.30 to 23,461.82.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.25% from 4.24% on Thursday. It reached around 4.28% overnight and into the early morning hours before reversing. A rise in a bond’s yield indicates that its price is weakening.

Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released on Friday that showed Inflation is hotter in the US at the wholesale level last month than expected by economists. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as happened last year.

In stock markets abroad, indices rose mostly in Europe after a mixed performance in Asia.

Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesia’s stock market resigned on Friday. Stocks have stumbled there in recent days after MSCI, an influential investment industry company that creates stock and other indices, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.