Franklin Freeman
copyright © the author 2003, 2004
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edited 23 June 2004
Concentrated on stocks of airlines, and companies, which were likely to be adversely affected by the attacks
Much higher than would be expected on average levels
One company through which such a transaction was made was Alex. Brown, which until 1998 was co-run by A.B. ("Buzzy") Krongard, who became the CIA's no. 3 man under the Bush administration.
His partner, Mayo Shattuck, resigned the day after 9/11.
In the week before 9/11, abnormally high numbers of put options were traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
A put option is a contract that gives a holder the right to sell companies' stock at a specified price before a certain date — in effect, it is a bet that the stock's price will fall by that date. And the greater the fall, the higher the gains. (A call option is the opposite, a "bet" that a stock will rise in price by a particular date.)
"On Sept. 6-7, when there was no significant news or stock price movement involving United, the Chicago exchange handled 4,744 put options for UAL stock, compared with just 396 call options ... On Sept. 10, an uneventful day for America, the volume was 748 calls and 4,516 puts, based on a check of option trading records.
"On Monday, the first day of trading following the attacks, shares of AMR fell 39 percent, and UAL stock plunged 42 percent. ...
"'I saw put-call numbers [ratios] higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,' John Kinnucan, a principal of Broadband Research, an independent telecommunication research firm, told the San Francisco Chronicle. ..."
("Exchange examines odd jump", CJ Online, 18 Sept. 2001)
"'This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,' Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News said ... on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America [on 20 Sept.] ...
"'Millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars on a bet that all told could be $600,000 turned into $10 million, $20 million,' Ratigan said."
("More Attacks Planned?", ABCNEWS, 20 Sept. 2004)
Bibliography
Michael C. Rupert, "Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading lead directly into the CIA's highest ranks", FromTheWilderness, 9 Oct. 2001, reproduced by Centre for Research on Globalisation
Don Radlauer, "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?", Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, 19 Sept. 2001
Christian Berthelsen, Scott Winokur, "Suspicious profits sit uncollected: Airline investors seem to be lying low", , 29 Sept. 2001
Mayo Shattuck profile, War Without End
Larry Ruilison, "Boundless Energy: Shattuck ..." (includes biographical details of Shattuck), Baltimore Business Journal, 31 Dec. 2001)
Center for Cooperative Research, "Suspicious Trading Activity" (a good overall coverage of activity in the week before 9/11, with online media references)
Center for Cooperative Research, (an outline of the background to the Alex Brown bank, and Krongard and Shattuck, and connections with pre-9/11 insider trading, etc, with online media references)