Poteshman's Unusual Pre-9/11 Option Market Activity Research

 

December 7th. A day that will live in infamy.  Looking back through some of the old family journals, I came across this entry from my dear old uncle, James T. Cheetum...

Monkey's log, Jungle date: 120741.  I was suddenly awoken by low flying cicadas (sik-A-daz) buzzing and chirping overhead.  Monkey oh monkey, are those things loud, or what?  The dart frogs have a low tolerance for this kind of behaviour and have begun mounting a counter-attack.  I have gathered the local chimps and will soon form an exploratory committee. 

Suspicions point to the local school of piranha.  Piranhas have no allegiance to anything or anyone and may have acted as catalyst to promote the frog-cicada conflict.  You see the dart frogs must cross the stream to get to the cicada stronghold and everyone knows that frog legs are a delicacy to the piranha, and the cicada, if attacked by the dart frog tend to abandon the tree tops and fall into the stream.  Piranhas profit from both sides so it is conceivable that the piranha will support both dart frogs and cicadas to maximize gains and perpetuate the battle. Bloody sharp-toothed savages! --JTC

 Wow, that's some great historical record.  Strange how the same 'Piranha-type' formula is used over and over again throughout history. 

 

 

 Since December 7th tends to remind me of September 11th, and September 11th tends to remind me of that glaring red flag, still-smoking gun of pre-9/11 put options bought just days before the attacks, I will direct you to some well-documented research that can be added to the mounting evidence file.

 I know, just another conspiracy theory nut job, right?  Believe what you want.  The 9/11 commission did their best in that fluff piece explaining exactly what they want you to believe.  Rather than write fiction, Allen M. Poteshman from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign determined the probability that unusual put option buying was more than just an "innocuous" event as the 9/11 commission stated in their report.  Poteshman cleans up, and then bisects and dissects the volume data he received from the CBOE and makes a logical case for re-examination to uncover the truth regarding this event.   

 You can find his paper and download it at http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/503645?origin=JSTOR-pdf Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001

Allen M.Poteshman University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Don't freak out when you see the strange looking equations for volume ratio and regression models.  Just read around them, and re-read later if you find his research worthy of your time.

I'm sure the 9/11 Commission did their best to run away from this information as fast as they could.  It was available.