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Days before the twin towers fell, extremely unusual stock trades were made on companies directly affected by the attack

NEUTRAL by u/McDowdy | Sep 12, 2026 | 1↑ 1 comments | 1 views | VIEW ON REDDIT
$AAL$UAL$MS$MER
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5D CHG +0.31%
30D CHG -10.15%
$UAL UNITED AIRLINES HOLDINGS, INC. INDUSTRIALS EQUITY SIMULATION
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+3.33 (+3.13%)
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$MS MORGAN STANLEY FINANCIAL SERVICES EQUITY SIMULATION
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+1.72 (+0.81%)
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$MER 4451613 EQUITY SIMULATION
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AI SUMMARY — The post argues that unusual options trading patterns before 9/11 on airlines (American Airlines, United Airlines) and financial firms (Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch) suggest prior knowledge of the attacks, citing multiple academic studies finding statistically abnormal trading volumes that contradict normal hedging explanations.
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“Follow the money.

For example, put options on American Airlines spiked over 11 times the normal trading volume, and put options on United Airlines increased to around 100 times the normal trading volume.

These put options mean the more a stock crashes, the more you profit. And these options were placed only on airlines connected to the attacks. No other airlines saw the same increase.

But what other companies did? Financial firms directly related to the World Trade Center. Morgan Stanley saw 20 times the normal put volume between September 6th and 10th, and Merrill Lynch saw around a 25-times increase over the same four days.

But don’t just take my word for it. Out of the University of Illinois, Allen M. Poteshman published in the Journal of Business that options trading data from these days is consistent with investors having pre-existing knowledge.

Out of the University of Zurich, researchers identified 13 abnormal trading events, specifically controlled for hedging, meaning they ruled out normal risk management explanations.

Then another study from Howard E. Thompson and a number of other researchers analyzed broader market behavior using the S&P 500 and found statistically significant spikes in fear indicators before the attacks that could not be explained.

So, three separate studies from respected research teams that all reached a similar conclusion: this was not normal trading behavior.

So who made these trades? Well, the majority went through the brokerage Alex Brown, a firm led by A. B. Krongard from 1997, who then became an executive director at the CIA by 2001.

The 9/11 Commission investigated these trades, determined they had reasonable explanations, and therefore concealed the identity of the investors. To this day, we don’t know

Academic Paper: A reference to the study titled "Unusual Options Market Activity with an Application to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001" by Allen M. Poteshman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

https://econpapers.repec.org/article/ucpjnlbus/v\_3a79\_3ay\_3a2006\_3ai\_3a4\_3ap\_3a1703-1726.htm