Friday, June 23, 2006

Sell, Sell, Sell

I have addressed the issue of the put options before, but one of our commenters brought it up, and I have read more on the issue since then, so I figured it merited addressing. It is one of the genuinely interesting subjects brought up by the conspiracy theorists, that can actually be discussed intelligently without immediately diving into nutcase zionists with thermite charges theories.

As some have pointed out, the 9/11 Commision report I have previously mentioned, refers to an investigation into ties with Al Qaeda, which they consider part of a coverup, because it would be irrational to conclude Al Qaeda had anything to do with this, and they should have investigated ties to shadowy neo-con/Zionist/Illuminati banks etc. instead.

But, as the report says (emphasis mine):

A single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95 percent of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10.

This missed the larger point that the investigators not only found the purchasers of the stock to not be suspicious, but the purchase itself was not suspicious. In this case, the puts were only part of a trading strategy to hedge their investment in UAL stock. In this case:

The investor
bought 95% X 3,150 put options (going short) = 299,250 shares
bought 115,000 shares (going long)

At the time their stock was selling for around $30 a share, so we are to believe that these evil international banker conspirators, upon knowing that 2 United Airlines planes were going to be hijacked, went out and bought over $3 million of stock in the company? Not the most likely plan.


Buying stock and taking out a put option to hedge it, is a common investment strategy by the way. There is actually a mathematical way to calculate how many options you need to buy based on its value and volatily, called the delta, which is way beyond the scope of this post, but click on the link if you are interested in an explanation.

Regardless, even if this was some type of conspiracy, how much money was made off of purchasing these options? Not that much. Insight Magazine did an article on this and found the following:
On Sept. 6, 2001, the Thursday before the tragedy, 2,075 put options were made on United Airlines and on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks, 2,282 put options were recorded for American Airlines. Given the prices at the time, this would have yielded speculators between $2 million and $4 million in profit--hardly what any analyst would call a killing in the options markets. Based on historical data for both airlines, the put options just prior to Sept. 11 neither were dramatic nor unprecedented.

A lot of money for you and me, but peanuts by international banking standards.

Much has been made regarding the volume being more than usual, but options trading is not like regular stock trades, where shares trade hands constantly, options are contracts largely taken out by investment firms, that are purchased from other investment firms. Thus, they are not anonymous, if someone does something unusual, they have to come back to collect their money later, and whoever got cheated is most likely going to look into it. Additionally the volume varies wildly depending on the investment climate and the firms involved.

Loose Change mentions 3,150 options as being 4 times its daily volume. But as Insight reports, this was not that much of an unusual amount. On October 19, 2000 6,625 put options on UAL were sold, over twice the amount of September 6, 2001. That was up from just 374 puts the previous day. Oddly enough, I don't remember any hijackings of UAL planes taking place any time soon after that.

The same goes for the other two companies mentioned. In actuality, if someone wanted to make money of the attacks, the best way would not be to buy puts in the companies involved, but to short the entire market, or buy oil futures. The Dow dropped over 16% in the weeks after 9/11, and buying puts on the much larger index market could have been done in larger quantities without drawing any attention, but then again the Loose Change boys couldn't put this much more complex theory into an ominous looking graphic in their movie that could be understood by their 20-something audience.

Update: An October 8th, 2001 article in Barron's, puts another nail into the coffin of this theory:

One large UAL put order was sent to the bustling CBOE floor in the days prior to Sept. 11 by a customer of Deutsche Bank. The primary trading post for UAL expected to handle the whole 2,500-contract order.


Instead, the customer split that into chunks of 500 contracts each, directing each order to various exchanges around the country, according to people familiar with the trade. Moreover, some of the options have yet to be exercised, possibly because those customers' accounts have been frozen.


But some option veterans say there's nothing unusual about either the size or manner in which the order was handled. Options in UAL are heavily traded, usually by institutions hedging their stock positions. Activity in AMR options also isn't conclusive. The heaviest trading was not in the cheapest, short-dated puts that would have provided the biggest gains to a conspirator with foreknowledge of the events of Sept. 11. Moreover, at least one analyst had issued a "sell" recommendation on AMR the previous week.


Finally, these and many other options had grown quite cheap in the weeks prior to the terrorist attacks -- another reason put buyers might have been legitimately attracted to them.

34 Comments:

At 23 June, 2006 18:51, Blogger nes718 said...

Put options.

 
At 23 June, 2006 19:10, Blogger Chad said...

Default, "Right to privacy" only works for those who aren't Zionist Joos.

 
At 23 June, 2006 19:19, Blogger nes718 said...

see, in america we have thing, you may have heard of it, its called "right to privacy"

That's not right to privacy, that's the SEC looking out for their own.

 
At 23 June, 2006 19:32, Blogger James B. said...

That paper is useless.

It is not even a published paper, as of March 2004 it is still listed as a draft. All he is saying is that in the 5 days before 9/11 more people bought put options in UAL and AMR relative to the market as a whole.

So, in any given 5 day period there is a 50% chance that this will happen. Without comparing this to the correlation between the two, this is meaningless. Even then you could not prove a connection, just come up with a probability.

Besides, his assumptions are based, not on an international zionist cabal making $15 billion through a huge number of diverse investments, but on a terrorist, or some other small investor buying a limited number of puts in just the two airlines after September 6th (based on when Osama said he knew about the timing of the plot). So the entire premise of his argument is based on an assumption that is contrary to what you believe.

Still you will use it as proof, such amazing logical flexibility.

 
At 23 June, 2006 19:55, Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:01, Blogger James B. said...

Within the boundaries that you set for yourself (e.g. that Al Qaeda was the force behind 9/11, which means when the 9/11 Commission has language such as the put option investor(s) having not conceivable relation to Al Qaeda,

Which are ironically also the boundaries in the study that Joan cites. Why don't you lecture her?

Those of us who know better won't have it.


I am still waiting for the list of all the things on this blog, the reader's guide, the Screw Loose Change video, or 9/11 Myths that are lies, distortions, misrepresenations or factually incorrect. Thus far I received exactly zero examples, as opposed to the dozens that we have come up with for Loose Change, or the 9/11 "truth" movement in general.

An amazing record of accuracy for a bunch of people who are supposedly so delusional.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:01, Blogger Unknown said...

James,

Within the boundaries that you set for yourself (e.g. that Al Qaeda was the force behind 9/11, which means when the 9/11 Commission has language such as the put option investor(s) having no conceivable relation to Al Qaeda, you think this is a reasonable approach to buttress your argument), you set up a situation where:

a) you see your thought process and conclusions as unassailable

b) we see a person who doesn't have a clue to see the the 100 reasons to believe that the 9/11 Commission was anything except a cover-up commission. You aren't even beginning to allow for facts, contradictions, manipulation by Zelikow, media etc.

With the constraints you put on yourself, you'll always be preaching to the choir that has been duped.

Those of us who know better won't have it.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:07, Blogger Unknown said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:11, Blogger Unknown said...

Sorry to delete and repost my comment out of order.... just trying to fix typos.

The book by D R Griffin: 9/11 Commission, Ommissions and Distortions is a good starting points, as mentioned elsewhere.

I don't mean to be quarrelsome, but if you think that the 9/11 Commission not putting Bush / Cheney under oath, not questioning Guiliani how he knew that the builings were comming down, not even addressing the collapse of Building 7, not following up ont he Mineta testimony, if you don't see a gigantic problem here, there really is no reason for us to try to conduct any kind of conversation on the matter.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:15, Blogger James B. said...

not questioning Guiliani how he knew that the builings where comming down,

The buildings were on fire had huge holes in the middle and freaking leaning over! Why don't we question Giuliani as to how he knows to go to the bathroom every day while we are at it?

not even addressing the collapse of Building 7

The 9/11 Commission was on the events leading up to the attack and the intelligence failures involved, not an engineering report. That is what the reports by FEMA, NIST, and the ASCE are for. You believe those are coverups too anyway, so what would be the point?

not following up ont he Mineta testimony

They did, look for a post on that later, in your honor.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:24, Blogger Unknown said...

James,

Mineta,

Spare me the post on 9/11 Commission Mineta follow-up. What they did, and what you are calling follow-up, is a joke.

Guilliani,

I am simply interested in
#1, Does Rudy G. say he came up with that conclusion on his own.

Most likely someone advised him. If so, who was that....

which leads to a under oath questioning to that person or persons...
etc. etc. etc.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:26, Blogger Unknown said...

Also, why, in heck's name, would be 9/11 Commission not demand the other tapes alleged to be in existence of the Pentagon crash?

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:28, Blogger nes718 said...

The buildings were on fire had huge holes in the middle and freaking leaning over!

What about Building 7? Building burn all the time and don't fall to the ground. But Giuliani knew exactly when to clear his control center @ building 7.

Also, he was part of the cover up in that he ordered the evidence cleared up as quick as possible thereby circumventing a real investigation.

Fact is, all those stooges that were once part of Robert Morgenthau's DA machine where in some way related to "oddities" of 9/11.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:30, Blogger nes718 said...

because hundreds of witnesses saw an american airlines 757 hit the building, video evidence would be redundant at best

I can't believe you actually wrote that, I really cannot. That is stupidest apologist comment I ever saw in writing.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:31, Blogger Unknown said...

Also, although there's no reason Joan and I, and the paper Griffin refers to, and Griffin all have to believe the same thing in lock step. I think, however, if Joan and I sat down and discussed the issue in-depth, I believe we would be in complete agreement that the whole main-stream idea of Al Qaeda and OBL is largely a convenient patsy, and therefore the idea that Wall Street connected types aren't necessarily on some far removed point away from the patsy "terrorists".

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:39, Blogger Unknown said...

The Able Danger cover up by the 9/11 Commission was done (most likely decided by Zelikow manipuation / "say so" as is true of almost every critical element) because the more the public gets the idea that the "hijackers" were being being monitored for YEARS before 9/11, the public might get a clue that they were being protected.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:41, Blogger Unknown said...

For what's it's worth, if anyone thinks that any crime should be prosecuted based on eye-witness testimony to the exclusion of physical evidence including photos or videos, you are on my stupid list and you are disqualified from any further comment here.

 
At 23 June, 2006 20:57, Blogger nes718 said...

Judge: well, hundreds of peopel saw you murder this person, but no one shot a video of it, so your free to go.

Fact is there IS indeed video footage of what happened. Video is usually a more reliable witness than people in that it is not left to interpretation. Now, when you have people seeing "humans" in windows going at 500MPH and a few videos showing the same event at different angles, I'd say the video evidence would be more compelling, but that's just me. In your world, you would actually take the word of those who saw people through the windows just before the plane met its demise.

 
At 23 June, 2006 21:02, Blogger Pat said...

James, one of my favorite bits is the ridiculous claims that hundreds of millions in stock gains due to 9-11 were never claimed. Apparently these folks believe that there's tons of money out there going unclaimed; this may be why I get all those emails from bankers in Botswana hoping that I'll file the necessary paperwork to become next of kin for that businessman killed in an Alaska Airlines crash.

 
At 23 June, 2006 21:03, Blogger nes718 said...

I find it funny that the only people mentioning this are CTs, when not a single public or private investigater at Ground Zero stated anything like this.

That's not what Bill Manning thought of the "clean up."

 
At 24 June, 2006 00:04, Blogger nes718 said...

the camera over the highway, like many highway cameras probably had a very low framerate, and the entire incident may have occured between frames

Wasn't it mentioned there were around 80 tapes of the incidence? That would be hard to fake since they come from varied sources and not "found" by unknown US military. I'm sure some of those tapes caught something. I guess we'll know if and when FBI decides to come clean.

 
At 24 June, 2006 09:03, Blogger shawn said...

Wasn't it mentioned there were around 80 tapes of the incidence?

The most I've heard of (outside the Pentagon's) is three.

 
At 24 June, 2006 09:14, Blogger nes718 said...

Which option would you choose nesnyc?

All you have to do to understand how 9/11 could have been carried out is read the Northwood documents. Why not ask Lemnitzer why he was going to use drones and fake passenger lists?

As for the DNA "evidence" you may want to read here how that was achieved.

We should not take speculative guesses because that makes you folks cringe and disbelieve the available evidence. I agree more than a few witnesses saw something that looked like a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon. Going by Northwoods this plane could have easily been a mock-up plane. And although we are told by a military witness that he found passengers still strapped to their seats in the aftermath, truth is all DNA analysis took place not on site but on one military base in Delaware. To date, there have been no pictures provided of people strapped to their seats from the remnants of flight 77. In fact, very little of the inside crash area has been released that shows anything but burned out office equipment or people in the building that were caught in the blast. Again, that's just what we see or what we're allowed to see.

So stop the speculation. Look at the available facts and see if they match up to the official account. IMO, they never do.

 
At 24 June, 2006 09:20, Blogger Alex said...

To date, there have been no pictures provided of people strapped to their seats from the remnants of flight 77.

You fucking LIAR. They were posted ON THIS SITE, in a thread which you commented in! What the hell is wrong with you?

And what the hell's the diference anyway? No matter what evidence we show you, you'll say it was faked. Only an utter moron would beleive that government managed to bring in a couple dozen tons of aircraft parts and scatter them without anyone noticing, yet no matter how much evidence we show you, that's exactly what you keep claiming.

 
At 24 June, 2006 09:27, Blogger shawn said...

All you have to do to understand how 9/11 could have been carried out is read the Northwood documents.

COULD HAVE been carried out. I could've fucked Denise Richards last night if I was a rich, handsome playboy, but y'know...that just didn't happen.

 
At 24 June, 2006 09:30, Blogger shawn said...

So stop the speculation.

I love how you guys can never seen the insane amount of irony in your own statements.

Look at the available facts and see if they match up to the official account. IMO, they never do.

I know people say opinions can't be wrong, but yours is. The facts do match up to the official account, your opinion notwithstanding.

 
At 24 June, 2006 12:37, Blogger James B. said...

You can find most of that stuff on the CBOE site, but it is a pain to sift through. I might later if I get really bored. Bloomberg might have it too, but I can only access that from school.

 
At 16 January, 2007 02:38, Blogger Brian said...

http://www.briansproperties.com/realtor When I was looking to buy a home in colorado and after finding and calling so many realtors that never returned my calls i finally found Brian.So i thought i would post and let other people know about his site if they were having the same toubles as i was.realtor He is a true professional

 
At 27 August, 2007 13:00, Blogger The Chalange said...

I clicked on the "Source" link on claim 2 that allegedly disproves the claim that Loose Change incorrectly covered the put options leading up to September 11.

A link with the word "Source" should obviously, I would think, lead to the source of the irrefutable confirmation of said fallibility. However, it leads to another blogger page without a cited reference clearly marked.

Not very convincing.

 
At 28 October, 2007 22:39, Blogger Open Minds in America said...

Do you even know wat a put option is... ya nobody made any money off the ones that were placed on AA because they never decided to go get their money... Ya some of the stuff isn't completely true in Loose Change but there is most definately more information that was and is not going to be released. And of course it is for "national security reasons," Well I guess you can be another closeminded individual who doesn't think for themselves and lets coorprate america run their lives.... we harbor lies

 
At 09 January, 2008 02:52, Blogger Bill said...

It's easy to hire a Private Investigater if you just check out that site. Make sure you watch Ron Paul videos too!

 
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At 13 March, 2010 09:38, Anonymous Anonymous said...

All your sources are bias, so stupid, this site is a joke.

 
At 22 March, 2011 19:35, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well , that was a good debunking. But what about the Hard drives from the towers? The ones that where " repaired" by that german company.

9/11/01 - WTC Hard Drives Show $100 Million In Criminal Credit Transfers Before Towers Fell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R3QgmWstJA

 

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