Can I get some help on these "push options"?

[leeroysphitz]

I am right now watching Loose Change 2nd ed. and I heard a mention of thousands of "push options" on airline stock immediately prior to 9/11. I've heard about this before, elsewhere and I've always had a question about it.

I've heard about the push options a number of time but have never heard any reference to WHO was purchasing them (if it even works that way!)
As I am wholly ignorant of the stock market let me ask those more familiar with history here: Is there no way for a government, or better yet an objective journalist to ascertain just which people or business entities were buying on those days and check to see what, if anything, they might have in common? or has it been done already? If so did it all pointed to Al Qaeda?

[hang a left]

1. They are called "put options"

Check out the Who Killed John O'Neil threads. Also view the video that was done on that same subject in another thread by mirandapriestly.

But basically they are like bets that one would make anticipating the decline of a particular stock.

[Bolo Boffin]

2. A put option is

purchasing the right to sell a stock at a certain price for a certain amount of time.

If the price dips below the agreed-upon price, then the person who has bought the put option can buy the stock at the lower price and sell it for the agreed-upon price. Free money. The buyer of the put option is expecting the stock to drop in value. The seller of the put option is expecting the stock to remain above the agreed-upon price (or the "strike" price). The buyer doesn't have to exercise the put option, however; if the stock price stays above the strike price, the buyer can simply elect to lose the money used to purchase the option.

There are a number of put options normally brought up when looking at the 9/11 attacks. The two major ones are put options bought against both United Airlines and American Airlines stock.

According to the 9/11 Commission report, these put options were scrutinized. Both the United and American put options were judged to be inconsequential. This can be found on page 499 of the report (pdf page 516).

95% of the United put options were purchased by a single company. This company also bought 115,000 shares of actual United Airlines stock at the same time. The put options were being used to protect the company's investment in United Airlines. If the stock goes up, the put options would remain unexercised, and the company would only have been out the money used to purchase the put options. If the stock goes down, the company exercises the options and thus can better control how much money it loses in buying the stock. These put options were bought as insurance, by people who expected the stock to pay them back enough to justify purchasing the put options.

The bulk of the American put options were traced, not to a single company, but to a single stock tip magazine, which on September 9th, recommended buying the put options to its readers. The readers of the magazine, then, were the purchasers, and the stock-tip magazine stood to gain only in increased readership.

As far as I know, no one ever exercised these put options. In other words, the buyers could have made money off the attacks, but no one did.

[leeroysphitz]

3. Thank you, that's exactly what I was looking for.

[truth01]

4. The truth about the put options...

The put options and other pre attack trades indicate foreknowledge. The evidence of this is well documented:
http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/stockputs.html

Would you walk away from $2.5 million?

http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/stockputs.html

The fact that $2.5 million of the put options remained unclaimed is not explained at all by market pessimism, and is evidence that the put option purchasers were part of a criminal conspiracy.

The names of the companies and individuals who made the trades is a state secret. Why?

And for anyone who does not already know, the 9/11 Commission Report is a A 571-Page Lie:
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20050523112738404

[canetoad]

17. Companies involved

As soon as US officials became aware of the Internet posting, they demanded that the Investment Dealers Association yank it from the web site, and the Canadian organization complied. However, reporters and others were able to copy the list before it was pulled.

The list includes the parent companies of American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, Southwest, United and US Airways, as well as Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, aircraft maker Boeing and defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Several insurance companies are on the list—American International Group, Axa, Chubb, Cigna, CNA Financial, John Hancock and MetLife.

The SEC list also includes several big companies that were tenants in the collapsed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center: investment firms Morgan Stanley, the complex’s largest occupant; Lehman Brothers; Bank of America; and the financial firm Marsh & McLennan.

Other major companies listed include General Motors, Raytheon, LTV, WR Grace, Lone Star Technologies, American Express, Bank of New York, Bank One, Citigroup and Bear Stearns.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/bond-o05.shtml

[DrDebug]

19. The easy to browse overview with links to company profile

And many are tied into 9/11 in one way or another. The list of CEOs and members of their boards is impressive especially the overlap. Citigroup and AIG are the main connections to most. For the airliners it is unclear, but they all told each other it seems.

Pre-9/11 inside traders

Did they know about those planes?

American Airlines (involved in the planes)

American Express Corp (in WTC7)

American International Group (involved in Kroll/Marsh/CIA)

AMR Corporation (I think I see an indirect link to the DCI here)

Axa SA (owner American Airlines. #2 global insurer)

Bank of America Corp (in WTC1)

Bank of New York Corp

Bank One Corp

Bear Stearns (Alan Greenberg was former CEO. Always tied up with the Bush family)

Boeing (involved in the planes)

Cigna Group

Citigroup Inc. (owns Salomon Smith Barney; did scam in Brazil with Kroll)

CNA Financial

Carnival Corp (Did a major Hurricane Katrina scam as well)

Chubb Group (Oscar Fanjul from Marsh on their board)

Continental Airlines

Dean Witter & Co. (See Morgan Stanley)

Deutsche Bank (CIA's favorite bank, since DB bought Alex Brown. Their building got partially destroyed as well. Biggest inside trader of them all)

General Motors

Genesis Intermedia (Adnan Khashoggi owner Huffman Aviation)

John Hancock Financial Services

Hercules Inc

L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc.

Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. (In WTC1 and WTC3. Links up with Blackstone group)

Lockheed Martin Corp.

Lone Star Technologies

LTV Corporation

Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. (In WTC1 as well as WTC2. Prime suspect.)

Martin Progressive (in WTC1)

MetLife (in WTC1)

Morgan Stanley (In WTC2)

Northwest Airlines

Progressive Corp.

Raytheon (In WTC2. Everybody in the building survived despite being above impact)

Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd.

Royal & Sun Alliance (Another AIG buddy)

Southwest Airlines

United Airlines (In the planes)

US Airways

Vornado Reality Trust (WTC - Port Authority deal)

W.R. Grace (Asbestos Inc. 250,000 little problems.)

XL Capital Ltd. (Part of AIG.)

[canetoad]

27. Vornado Realty Trust

Do you know much about them? I have read the numerous stories about their pull-out from WTC purchase before the lease went to Silverstein.

At the time of the deal Vornado had a director called Wendy Silverstein. Could just be a coincidence, but I'd love to find a link between her and Leaping Larry.

[DrDebug]

28. Larry Silverstein and Vornado worked together

Well you know about the deal and the last moment pull out so Larry could get it. I personally think that it could have been related to the fact to Silverstein was too small to get the Twin Towers, so if he signed right away there would have been lots of questions whether he could afford it. Vornado could afford it, so by backing out at the last moment, they had no choice other then to use Larry.

Don't know much about Wendy.

Yahoo has this profile:

Wendy Silverstein has been Executive Vice President-Capital Markets of Vornado Realty Trust since April 1998; Senior Credit Officer of Citicorp Real Estate and Citibank, N.A. from 1986 to 1998.

http://yahoo.investor.reuters.com:80/OfficersBio.aspx?target=executiveofficers/biographies&ticker=VNO

And Salomon Smith Barney is Citigroup and they are the main company in WTC7.

[dailykoff]

29. Vornado is connected to Bloomberg.

They're the brokers for Bloomberg's gigantic midtown office/retail/condo tower that started going up on Lexington right after the Trade Center got blown away.

[petgoat]

10. That the options lacked nexus to al Qaeda was enough for the

9/11 Commission to judge them to be inconsequential.

According to Snopes, a single buyer on 9/6 and 9/7 bought options to sell 640,000 shares.
This buyer then hedged the bet by purchasing 115,000 shares.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

The 9/11 Commission passes all this off as innocuous, but they also said that the
hijackers' source of funds "was of little practical significance."

They were very strangely unwilling to follow Step One of an organized crime
investigation: Follow the Money.


edit to change brainfart "purchase" to "sell"

[DrDebug]

11. He must have bought about $100B worth of options

Which is strange, because even Bill Gates can't do that...

[Brainster]

30. Two Corrections

The institutional investor that bought the puts on UAL also bought shares of American, not UAL. And I doubt very strongly that the put options were not exercised. Why would an institutional investor have taken the hit on the American Airlines stock and not cashed in the profit on the puts on UAL? I'm aware of the SF Chronicle article, but the article makes it clear that these were October 2001 puts and the contracts had thus not expired at the time of the Chronicle piece (published September 29, 2001). Options expire on the third Friday of each month unless that's a holiday in which case it's the third Thursday. And not cashing them in doesn't make sense; it would actually be more suspicious, not less.

[piobair]

31. wouldn't have to exercise

The owners of the options wouldn't have to exercise them to collect. As long as it was before the expiration date, the owners could just sell them on the open market. Even on expiration date the options would still be worth however much they were in the money less 1/8 or so for the market maker. Unless you had access to brokerage firms accounts there is no way of knowing if the holders of the puts sold them or not.
Great description of puts by the way.

[mirandapriestly]

5. DU is So infiltrated, it's not funny.

I mean it really isn't funny.

[Bolo Boffin]

6. You say that like it's a bad thing. n/t

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seemslikeadream]

15. Speaking of crazy moonbats, how is Bozos for Bush salvorhardin?

Just poking fun at people, is that what you're calling it these days? That was one of his favorite pastimes too, wasn't it? Or was it? Hmmmm, trash talk is what I call it. You should be so fortunate to never be on the receiving end of it.

Jah Bless

SLaD

[salvorhardin]

18. John follows his own muse

And we argue over it regularly. You're always free to e-mail him.

[mirandapriestly]

22. Wow, salvadorhardon,

At least I have to go to great lengths to accomplish my goals , all you have to do is make a post. I see you've learn to use spell check. Too bad they don't have "IQ check"

[salvorhardin]

24. How many spelling errors are in miranda's post complaining about spelling?

I count three, although one is really a grammatical error. There's a punctuation error too.

How many do you count?

[mirandapriestly]

25. Uh-oh, spell check must have changed your name spelling.nt

[salvorhardin]

26. I don't think spell check changed your punctuation

or deleted your verb ending. ;-)

Did you get your paycheck from the VRWC yet? Mine's late again. Damnit, I have those boat payments to make.

[mirandapriestly]

32. I post in conversational mode

I don't make an attempt to edit grammar, etc.. and the people who post as OCT here are two types, one may have an organization (ie GOP) behind them, but some people are foolish enough to believe that terrorists with box cutters commandeered 4 planes, outsmarting our Air Force, Intelligence & Norad on 9-11. I've always thought you were the latter. Although you have morphed from someone who could barely speak English, so who knows?

[DrDebug]

7. Only the companies are known

The SEC did not investigate it further. So all we have are the companies and not the names of the people. The same happened in Germany, France, Singapore, Luxembourg and Tokyo because those stock markets also got flooded. It was several billion and there was no al-Qaeda. Just many of companies who had offices in WTC, defense contractors, all major airlines, Deutsche Bank (CIA's own bank) etc. Oh yeah and the hidden owner of Huffman Aviation, a guy called Adnan Khashoggi who was also featured in Iran/Contra as Oliver North's friend.

The list is here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x97987

The SEC has easy access to the list of names. The point is that you need the names of the people involved and nobody did that of course. Only one person is known: Amr Ibrahim Elgindy because attorney Kenneth Breen had an outburst in a courtroom and accused him of unloading $300,000 worth of shares on Sept. 10, 2001. ( http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6/2/62018.shtml )

The same applies to Convar. There are reports of a sharp rise in credit card transactions at the WTC on 9/11. Unusually large sums of money were rushed through the computers. Convar tried to recover the data. The Convar data salvage found more than $100 million on insider transactions took place in the hours and minutes before the twin towers collapsed. The reconstructed data was given by Convar to the FBI. And in June 2002 Ontrack/Convar was acquired by Kroll Inc. (Kroll O'Gara Eisenhardt) who is also a prime suspect in 9/11 and believed to be a CIA front. Nothing has ever been heard of the recovered data or the investigation since then. ( http://www.heartbone.com/questions/questions.htm )

"I saw put-call numbers higher than I've ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,' said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle,"

'it's absolutely unprecedented to see cases of insider trading covering the entire world from Japan, to the U.S., to North America, to Europe."

http://www.themodernreligion.com/terror/wtc-unusualtrading.html

And the OCTers want you to believe that nobody knew :sarcasm:
19 terrorists armed with $1.49 box-cutters and knifes who were controlled by a dude in a cave in Afghanistan caused unprecedented put options covering the entire world which started three weeks prior to 9/11 and reached historic levels from the Thursday before 9/11 onwards.

[DrDebug]

8. And don't believe people who tell you that 285 times normal

is inconsequential, because it is not and has never happened before in history. And we are dealing with a crime against humanity here.

Andreas von Bulow, a former Minister of Defense of the German Parliament, once responsible for the oversight of the German secret services, estimated that profits by insider traders were $15 billion.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html

Just to make clear exactly what 9/11 is.

Killing one person is called murder.
Killing several person is called mass murder.
Destroying the World Trade Center and killing about 3,000 is beyond that. It could have been described as a crime against the people of New York City, however 9/11 was used for two wars as well and many other things, so it's not even a crime against the people of the United States, it is a crime against humanity. The worst crime which is known and which resulted from the Nuremberg Trials because there was no other way to describe it.

[leeroysphitz]

13. Thanks for the info but now I'm just as confused as ever.

There are records of exactly WHO purchased put-options and WHEN they made the purchases but NOBODY from any governmental or journalistic organization has bothered to simply ask those concerned WHY?

I don't "buy" any of the "official" versions of the events. I know there are some very obvious questions that our government has not seen fit to answer and answers that they have provided that don't fit facts that we can all see with our own two eyes but these put options are over the top. How can there not be more information?

I don't understand.

[DrDebug]

14. Those records are not released

The SEC released a list of 38 companies who did inside trading. Probably by mistake. We also know of some others like Genesis Intermedia who did it, but they REFUSE to give the names of those who did the inside trading. A lot will be off-shore customers, so it will be accounts in the Caribbean or Canary islands which cannot be traced to people. The same applies to Luxembourg because that tiny country saw massive trading however that IS a secret. The rest of the world is more or less open.

Nobody wants to know why, because it is bound to be politicians, CEOs and upper management of companies in the World Trade Center, defense contractors, big players and a lot of Intelligence officers and not just from the US, but will most likely contain the top players in the financial world, intelligence community and politics in the whole world who knew and used it to their own advantage.

[mirandapriestly]

23. Join the crowd. It's obscene isn't it?

Supposedly, it is under investigation, but nothing ever happens. They know damn well who did it and those people had pre-knowledge and why? If it leads back to "al Qaeda" then what's the problem? The thread on "Who Killed John O'Neill" talks about it. I asked the same thing you did: why don't they DO something?

[DrDebug]

12. Not mentioned prev.: Germany also said insider trading on oil and gold

Oil and gold futures The Associated Press reported on September 22nd that a German Central Bank study strongly points to "terrorism insider trading" not only in airline and insurance companies but also in gold and oil futures. These he said, "could not be chalked up to coincidence." Bundesbank President, Ernst Welteke, said that though it would be "extremely difficult to really verify" but he believed "in one or the other case it will be possible to pinpoint the source."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html

Mind that was on the German market. The al-Qaeda Hamburg cell, right?

Or is this another unreliable report? Or is 9/11 commission and snopes unreliable in this case?

Also from the same source:
The Treasury note transactions included a single $5 billion trade.

Does Osama bin Laden have $5 billion? He is rich, he is not that rich! So who could afford a single transaction of $5B. Very few can do that.

[reprehensor]

16. Paul Zarembka, Prof. of Economics.

"...The 9-11 Commission lamely deposed of the issue of insider trading in one
sentence: ‘‘Exhaustive investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission,
FBI, and other agencies have uncovered no evidence that anyone
with advance knowledge of the attacks profited through securities transactions’’
(p. 172). That sentence did, however, have an elaborating footnote to
it, which should be reproduced fully:

Highly publicized allegations of insider trading in advance of 9/11 generally rest on
reports of unusual pre-9/11 trading activity in companies whose stock plummeted after
the attacks. Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have
an innocuous explanation. For example, the volume of put options – investments that
pay off only when a stock drops in price – surged in the parent companies of United
Airlines on September 6 and American Airlines on September 10 – highly suspicious
trading on its face. Yet, further investigation has revealed that the trading had no
connection with 9/11. 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. These examples typify the evidence
examined by the investigation. The SEC and the FBI, aided by other agencies and the
securities industry, devoted enormous resources to investigating this issue, including
securing the cooperation of many foreign governments. These investigators have found
that the apparently suspicious consistently proved innocuous. Joseph Cella interview
(Sept. 16, 2003; May 7, 2004; May 10–11, 2004); FBI briefing (Aug. 15, 2003); SEC
memo, Division of Enforcement to SEC Chair and Commissioners, ‘‘Pre-September 11,
2001 Trading Review’’, May 15, 2002; Ken Breen interview (Apr. 23, 2004); Ed G.
interview (Feb. 3, 2004) (Commission, p. 499, fn. 130, including the citations, but not
made available to the public).

This footnote downgrades the problem to be investigated as to be only
‘‘some unusual trading’’.

Analyzing the Commission’s representation, Griffin (2005, pp. 52–57)
explains logical problems with the footnote, noting also the delimitation to
the sole question as to whether al-Qaeda was involved, i.e., the Commission’s
reference to a ‘‘single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable
ties to al-Qaeda’’. Suppose this investor were an insider to the
events to follow, but was not connected to al-Qaeda? Ruppert (2004, p. 243),
with the acuteness of his own background as a Los Angeles police officer,
noted a report by Winokur (2001) that the Securities and Exchange Commission
probe behind the possibility of insider trading ‘‘effectively deputized
hundreds, if not thousands, of key players in the private sector’’. Ruppert
then points out that the SEC had, thereby, also made it illegal for these same
persons to go public with any information they had, presumably with a legal
force even beyond normal requirements of holding specific client information
confidential.

In any case, we examine the Commission’s footnote for the limited evidence
provided. Two pieces of partial evidence are proffered: (a) An unnamed
institutional investor who bought ‘‘95 percent of the UAL puts on
September 6’’ purportedly related this purchase to a purchase of 115,000
American shares on 9-10-01, and (b) a ‘‘U.S.-based options trading newsletter’’
which, on 9-9-01, recommended to subscribers put options the next
day on American (actually, AMR, the parent company). Beyond these two
pieces of rather vague evidence, one is simply asked to take the Commission’s
word for it that an overall investigation led to the conclusion that the
option trades were ‘‘innocuous’’...

- Zarembka, Paul. (2006) Initiation of the 9-11 Operation, With Evidence of Insider Trading Beforehand. In: P. Zarembka (Ed), The Hidden History of 9-11-2001. Research in Political Economy (Vol. 23). Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 68-70

"...indeed, there is evidence of insider trading before 9-11 on American Airlines and United Airlines."

- Zarembka, Paul. (2006) Initiation of the 9-11 Operation, With Evidence of Insider Trading Beforehand. In: P. Zarembka (Ed), The Hidden History of 9-11-2001. Research in Political Economy (Vol. 23). Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 49-50

The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, a review...
http://www.gnn.tv/B16240

[petgoat]

20. Note also that the citing of the impressive purchase of

115,000 UAL shares (by the 9/11 Commision) without enumerating the put options on
640,000 shares is dishonest.

[seemslikeadream]

21. Buzzy Krongard managed firm that handled PUToptions on United Airlines

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/seemslikeadream/106