OBL an options trader?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, I don’t mean that literally, but do you think that OBL bought puts and otherwise established positions to benefit from the market falls following the terrorist attacks?

The guy comes from money, and obviously he’s been doing a good job of hiding it for years since he’s been on the US shit list. Certainly, the first thing that went through my mind on Wednesday morning as my Hong Kong stock positions free fell about 15% was I bet that dickweed put on short positions.

It appears that put abnormal trading activity took place in put positions on insurers, airlines and brokerage houses. Here is a Bloomberg link http://www.bloomberg.com/feature/feature1000907897.html
Unfortunately, regulators generally are a few cans short of a 6 pack.

I used to be an investment banker, actually an equity derivatives specialist, in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Personally, I would have bought index puts or shorted index futures on a variety of global markets rather than individual company options. That would have been much easier to hide amoung general trading activity. I would have also shorted call options, as regulators probably wouldn’t think look at those.

Any thoughts?

2

Last week I heard one report that the German equivalent of the SEC was investigating a Munich company that was one of the WTC insurers. Evidently, a lot of stock was sold short a few days before the attack. I can’t find a link to the story.

It is almost certain that Bin Hidin’ and his cohorts here in the US have been doing things like this.

Excuse me…allegedly. :rolleyes:

3

I’ve heard that at least one of the companies had just published their 3rd quarter projections and so a high volume of trading was not unexpected.