City nears 'all clear' on pre-carnage tradesBy George Trefgarne, Financial Correspondent (Filed: 25/09/2001) THE Financial Services Authority has nearly completed its investigation into possible insider trading before the New York terrorist attacks and is on the verge of giving the City a clean bill of health. Sir Howard Davies hopes to be able to sound the all clear this week. The news will be a relief to the City. There have been fears that terrorists used their knowledge to make profits by selling airline and insurance stocks and buying gold. Regulators in New York have been investigating huge short selling orders - where investors gamble that shares will fall - in American Airlines and United Airlines. In London, the Liffe futures exchange was concerned about unusual movements in options based on British Airways shares. Hundreds of FSA staff have been involved in the 10-day investigation. They have called about half of the 8,500 financial firms regulated in the UK and asked them to check their records. The operation has been co-ordinated by Carol Sergeant, the FSA director in charge of regulation. The FSA would not comment yesterday, but one source close to the investigation said: "Nothing really has been turned up here. For every trade there has been an explanation like a broker sell note. If there was anything behind all this, they would have found it by now." The source said: "I wouldn't say it's been a red herring." A big chunk of Middle Eastern money is managed out of London and there were natural fears that the City might be involved in any suspicious trades. Didier Reynders, the Belgian finance minister, pointed the finger over the weekend, saying: "There are very strong suspicions in Great Britain at the moment." The fact that no insider trading has been found may be seen as a partial vindication of existing money laundering rules, which work on the "know your customer" principle. Nonetheless, Gordon Brown has said he wants to tighten them up. However, London is not completely off the hook. A separate investigation run by the National Criminal Intelligence Service to see if any terrorist assets are invested or managed in London is continuing. If there is anything of which financial firms are suspicious, they must file a report to the NCIS which may then alert S0-13, Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist unit.
========================================= Well, nothing to see here. Move along. |
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Could this also point to the possibility that it was someone other than a bunch of cave dwelling Afghanis who orchestrated this attack? Not an option?
No, of course not. Repeat the mantra:
BIN LADEN IS THE DEVIL
BIN LADEN IS THE ENEMY
BIN LADEN MUST DIE
COME ON!!!
A stock option is something that gives you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a certain amount of stock at a certain price. The option expires by a certain date.
As an example, on Friday 9/7, Boeing was trading at $44.85/share. You could buy a "put" option to sell Boeing at $50/share. The cost of the option was $5.40. If you had the option contract in hand, you could buy Boeing at 44.85 and turn around and sell it at 50, for a profit of $5.15/share. But this would not be attractive, since the price of the option ($5.40) was more than the profit you would make.
But, if you bought that option on 9/7/2001 and exercised it on the next trading day after WTC, you would make a BIG profit
On 9/17/2001, Boeing closed at $35.80. Anybody who bought an option on 9/7 would have been able to buy Boeing at 35.80 and sell it at 50.00, for a gain of $14.20.
Anybody who bought an option for $5.40 on 9/7 would have almost TRIPLED his money
There was a HUGE amount of option activity in Boeing on 9/7
Anyone who knew that several Boeing planes were about to play kamakazi could predict that a long-term fall in airline travel would mean that airlines were not going to be buying new planes anytime soon.
The bin Laden group are very good at identity theft and falsifying ID documents. So you open up several options accounts months ahead of time; do your trades the Friday/Monday before; 9/11 happens, you cash out, wire the money overseas, and disappear. When the SEC investigators finally get around to looking for you, they discover the account's mailing address is an abandoned building.
I'm thinking the closure of the stock exchanges after 9/11 due to all the damage may have been an unexpected development for bin Laden, in that it may have allowed investigators to notice the goings-on before the markets reopened and the terrorists had a chance to cash-out their winnings.
Suppose you woke up on the morning of September 10th, and although you can't recall any of the details, you have this vague recollection of a dream, the most lingering effect being that you just have this feeling as a result of the dream that today would be a good day to short some airline stocks.
So you call up your friendly stock broker, put some money on the line, and find your self a lot richer over the next few days.
Do you keep the money?
Didn't the 9/11 commission claim there was no Al-Quaeda involvement in the stock-market?
Doom? I'll tell ya doom. It's making China a permanent favored trading partner with PNTR so that we can ship our factories there.
Wonder how many Dems were in on the deal?
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