A couple of days after 9/11 it was widely reported that several parties had seriously shorted (i.e. much higher short volume than usual) the stocks of United Airlines, American Airlines, and possibly the stocks of other companies located within the WTC, just days prior to the attacks. Since then I haven’t seen or heard anything about this. Does anyone know if there were any leads generated from this, or was it just faulty reporting?
Good question - I’ve been wondering about this myself.
Snopes has this to say about it.
I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about this story in the news media - it seems very scandalous. I don’t see why it’s so tough to track down those who did this, through financial records.
Well, here’s a previous discussion on this topic here on the SDMB:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=88323
I would tend to agree with the closing poster-whoever was trying to do this undoubtedly wrote off their investment(s) they made in Chicago, but it’s possible that they made some cash off of foreign exchanges before the heat came on. And if the news media isn’t reporting on it any longer, it’s most likely because stories about our Special Forces and bombers blowing things up in Afghanistan are ‘sexier’ than stories about FBI accountants tracing a money laundering trail. In any case, we looked at the numbers on the previous thread, and there’s no doubt that this did happen. Someone who was ‘in the know’ tried to use that information to make a quick killing in the commodities market buying ‘put’ options on AMR and UAL on the Chicago exchange. There were rumors about short-selling of these stocks on the German and Japanese stock exchanges (and not, naturally enough, on Wall Street, which they would realize would suspend operations), but I have seen no confirmation of these stories.
The SEC, along with the CFTC and a bunch of other acronyms I forget, wrote a letter to every brokerage firm in the country telling them to assign a fairly senior person to be the point person to this. The letter informs that that person should have the power to ask any question s/he wishes about customer trading but will provide answers to nothing.
So far as I know (I’m not the point person at my firm), they’re still tracking this.