#4. Did privileged insiders profit from stock trades they made due to knowledge that the 9/11 attacks were imminent?

Financial records reveal that an extraordinarily large number of “put options” were placed against American Airlines and United Airlines stock just before the attacks of September 11. Put options are speculative instruments that reward investors when a particular investment – such as stocks – loses value. Traders who accumulated put options in unusually large numbers for the two airlines that were involved in the 9/11 attacks before the attacks took place were clearly expecting the value of those two stocks to drop, making their investment very profitable as well as very suspicious.