September 19, 2003: FBI Finds No Proof of 9/11 Insider Trading

Spokesperson Paul Bresson announces that the FBI has concluded that there was no insider trading in US securities markets by people with advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. According to Bresson, the “vast majority” of a pre-attack surge of trading in options that bet on a drop in the stock of AMR Corp., which owns American Airlines, and UAL Corp., which owns United Airlines, was conducted by investment hedge funds implementing bearish investment strategies or hedging a line position of common stock, and was not linked to terrorists. [9/11 Commission, 8/18/2003 ; St. Petersburg Times, 9/19/2003; Washington Post, 9/19/2003] However, seven months later, a paper by a professor of finance at the University of Illinois will conclude that “there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11” (see April 25, 2004). [Poteshman, 3/10/2004]