September 10, 2001 – Large number of "put" options are placed on American Airlines stock betting that the stock price would fall.

"An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.
The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.
Sources tell 60 Minutes that the initial options were bought through at least two brokerage firms including NFS, a subsidiary of Fidelity Brokerage, and TD Waterhouse, a discount firm.
TD Waterhouse says they handled approximately 3 percent of the initial orders for "puts" on American Airline stock. The company says it has looked at the orders and has determined no evidence of any suspicious activity.
The same thing happened with United Airlines on the Chicago Board Options Exchange four days before the attack. An extremely unbalanced number of trades betting United’s stock price would fall ? also transformed into huge profits when it did after the hijackings." – CBS (09/19/01)

"There was an unusually large jump in purchases of put options on the stocks of UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. in the three business days before the attack on major options exchanges in the United States. On one day, UAL put option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average. In the month before the attacks, short sales jumped by 40 percent for UAL and 20 percent for American.
Other financial professionals have told The Chronicle that an estimated $5 million to $10 million in all could have been made on the trades, including trading on other days and purchases of options on the parent company of American, AMR Corp. Four United and American aircraft crashed in the attacks.
The money was made on Sept. 6, 7 and 10 in transactions involving United, American, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co., the center said. Morgan Stanley occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center; Merrill Lynch’s headquarters offices were nearby.
The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of the options. Rohini Pragasam, a bank spokeswoman, declined comment." – San Francisco Chronicle (09/29/01)

"Securities regulators around the world are investigating whether the terrorists involved in last week’s attack profited in financial markets, possibly by buying options on the stock of United Airlines, Boeing, American Airlines and other companies in the knowledge that prices would fall.
The day before the attacks, put volume on American Airlines stock was 4,516, nearly 11 times its average daily volume for the year." – Chicago Tribune (09/19/01)

– More news articles on 9/11 insider trading at:  9/11 Truth.org’s Reading Room