Doug: > Yup, these master plotters who could pull off a job > like 9/11 and blame it on some bearded dudes in caves, > forgot that there are detailed records of options > trading!
I read Poteshman's (not Potestman) article. It is a decent article, although I cannot say that its econometrics is anywhere near earth-shaking. As anyone here knows, no econometric work proves anything: Econometric works can only provide support for hypotheses in that whatever are the hypotheses of concern they cannot be rejected off hand, if that. And the paper of Poteshman provides support for the hypothesis that there were informed traders who traded options in advance of the attacks in that sense. Why are you surprised Doug? Whoever did this knew what they were going to do before they did it. And, of course, it is highly likely that there were others, who were associated with the attackers, who knew about the attacks ahead of time as well. Is it not possible that some of them had been into trading options? After all, the attacks were to the heart of the Wall Street, so is it not quite possible that some of those who were associated with the attackers were financially savvy? Poteshman's article does not tell you who the informed traders were. It just tells you that we cannot reject the hypothesis that there were informed option traders ahead of the attacks. Indeed, Poteshman blames this on some bearded dudes in caves himself. Stupid, of course. How can he say anything like that? His is just another speculation. By the way, I looked at the Thompson Insider Trading database and did not see any noticeable trades by the upper management neither of United (Ticker: UAL) nor of American (Ticker: AMR) around September 11, 2001. Of course, this is not proof that the upper managements of neither companies did not know anything about the attacks ahead of time, either. Who knows? Best, Sabri ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091
