4 ms·

> All trade data, even HFT sourced, is available from exchanges. You mean it's available to government regulators, but not to the general public, correct? If

> All trade data, even HFT sourced, is available from exchanges. You mean it's available to government regulators, but not to the general public, correct? If stock and option trades are part of the public record, there are lots of questions I'd like to answer for myself. Otherwise, we're just taking the word of other people (the regulators). Here's one question: I'd like to know who specifically was behind the huge volume in put options on United and American Airlines stock immediately before the 9/11 attack. Someone was essentially shorting those two airlines, and only those two. (For example, Bloomberg data showed that on 6 September 2001, the Thursday before the attack, the put-option volume in UAL stock was nearly 100 times higher than normal: 2,000 options versus 27 on the previous day.) The 9/11 Commission report concluded that, "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", but they refused to identify who it was. Everything is not so transparent unless there's some public repository for all this information that I'm not aware of.

fabulist 12y ago
This is chilling. What are the odds that this wasn't "insider trading" with the attackers?
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  > What are the odds that this wasn't "insider trading" with the attackers? Extremely high. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp
mikeyouse 12y ago
I'm sure it was an innocent oversight for you to leave off the remainder of the 9/11 commission's quote; """ 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. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. The SEC and FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. """

fabulist 12y ago

This is chilling. What are the odds that this wasn't "insider trading" with the attackers?

mikeyouse 12y ago
> What are the odds that this wasn't "insider trading" with the attackers? Extremely high. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

mikeyouse 12y ago

I'm sure it was an innocent oversight for you to leave off the remainder of the 9/11 commission's quote; """ 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. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades. The SEC and FBI, aided by other agencies and the securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. """