Does Homeland Security have a duty to Investment Security? (Black Monday)

Listening to Tom Ridge today, I couldn't help but think of my stock portfolio.

As he listed off the specific terror targets indentified in chatter to a fear mongering media...

World Bank in DC, Prudential Life of NJ, CitiGroup of NY (and the NYSE)

I wondered why not a single reporter asked the questions I would.

Will trading on these compainies be suspended? Will all trading be suspended? Should investors worry at all? If no controls are in place, what's to stop an irrational sell off? Or even a rational one?

Then I remembered I sold all my stock to make house payments after 9/11 and busted my 401(k) last year to pay for healthcare.

So screw 'em.

But surely someone is placing market sell orders right now wondering what will happen when trading opens Monday? Maybe alot of someones. Why isn't this being discussed by Homeland Security or someone.

If the terrorist's intent is to crash our financial institutions, doesn't allowing wild speculation and fear do just that?

Maybe trading will be suspended. Or maybe tomorrow will be the mother of all Black Mondays. Guess well see. Sure glad I'm already broke.

They have safety measures in place to prevent panic selling from bringing down the entire market but I don't know if there's anything that will protect individual stocks.

SEC.gov:
The major stock and commodities exchanges have instituted procedures to limit mass or panic selling in times of serious market declines and volatility. These mechanisms are known as Circuit Breakers, the Collar Rule, and Price Limits. Circuit Breakers establish whether trading will be halted temporarily or stopped entirely. The Collar Rule and Price Limits affect the way trading in the securities and futures markets takes place. Here�s a description of each one:

Good Post.

Something else along those lines started over here also: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Good reference AceofBase. I know it's been done! Just surprised me the media doesn't even ask that question. And you're right, it is curious if they can do that for specific named institutions involved in a threat, but not the entire exchange.

Catch 22. If they suspend trading on a threatened institution and it blows up! That's bad. Terrorists win.

If they don't suspend trading and nothing happens but speculation plummits value. Terrorists win again.



Seems like the thing to do is suspend trading, and ensure nothing happens. If that's even possible.

Originally posted by Gools
Good Post.

Something else along those lines started over here also: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Ah, sorry for splitting the topic 1amc. Didn't see that in Politics.

I am not financial genius and my knowledge of the stock market is kind of outdate, but somebody most be profiting from this entire terrorist scare.

And Rant while you where hurting after the 9/11 others were profiting from the 9/11 tragedy.

Interesting point, but as a surgeon at my hospital says: "It may not be pretty, but the show must go on." If they shut down the exchanges, the cornerstone of the economy are they saying that "we can't protect you"?

Originally posted by AceOfBase
They have safety measures in place to prevent panic selling from bringing down the entire market but I don't know if there's anything that will protect individual stocks.

All The speed bumps do is take computerized trading offline and manual trading insues. It will slow down things a little, but can't prevent a full selloff if people are heading in that direction.

I have the feeling that bin laden himself is profiting from all this scare

The old saying is "to buy when there is blood running in the streets." Horrible, as this sounds, there are certain to be people who will profit from the information that was given as to the supposed targets. And, there are people who will most likely lose money.
My husband is in the financial business and says the controls should work, but they won't work forever. As he says, if the markets start going doing, the circuit breakers will kick in. Then, after a prescribed time, buying and selling starts again. If the market keeps going down, then there's another point where the circuit breakers kick in once again. The idea being to slow down the psychology of the market. All the big brokerages have this programmed trading and it's automatically kicked in to protect positions at all time. What programmed trading does is to create instability in the market because large amounts of shares are being traded on preordained information. Similar firms have similar programs so it really has a snowballing effect. That's why the market itself has the circuit breakers.
These circuit breakers can only work for a so long..it's a delaying of trading, but if people want to sell, eventually those trades will be made, and if there aren't people or institutions to pick up that slack, then there's no stability in the price levels of stocks. Then price levels become completely unstable.
Personally, he thinks, that before the beginning of trading, trading will be suspended only on those corporations listed as targets. It's similar to what happens when an airline has a crash.
It's a very cautious time but the Homeland Security and Administration knew vey well that, if they made this kind of announcement, they must have known that they would introduce large amounts of instability into the market.
Any introduction of risk will bring about lower prices and,for some, buying opportunities. Sad, but true.
joey

Selling short tomorrow will probably make you alot of money IF you get your "puts" in early enough AND the market tanks because of today's events. This is a VERY risky thing to do because there is no "bottom" to your losses if the market rallies.

Right now I wouldn't sell short, it's too hard to tell if Bloomberg may have bailed them out with his EXCELLENT, IMHO, comments this afternoon.

Furthermore, I don't buy the "Terrorists win" argument if the market tanks tomorrow. They may have won a battle but who is to say the morket would have tanked tomorrow anyway? NOBODY. Anyone who could reliably predict that would be the wealthiest person on the planet.

The thing to watch this week, relative to the market, is the new jobs number on the Non-Farm Payroll report Friday. I beleive THAT is going to have a helluva alot bigger impact, one way or the other, than this rather obvious statement (NYC financial institutions are targets of terrorists- Doh!) we got today will.

I would say that if you have any Bond positions, tomorrow may well be a GOOD day to take some profits and re-coup your losses from the first 2 quarters of 2004 however.

m...

Originally posted by Springer
Selling short tomorrow will probably make you alot of money IF you get your "puts" in early enough AND the market tanks because of today's events. This is a VERY risky thing to do because there is no "bottom" to your losses if the market rallies.
m...

Put options, the biggest winner will be the US Gov, I think.

Quoted from Walter Burien at CAFI1.com

The five million dollars generated from the unclaimed 911 American Airline put option is truly chump change.

The morning of 911, US Bonds moved in 3 to 4 minutes by 1.5 points back and forth three times or $1,500 per contract in seconds three times in less than 4 minutes.

Most institutional traders trade in blocks of 500 to 3,000 contracts. Daily transactions are 350,000 to 400,000 contracts traded. The bond market trading was suspended about one half hour after the attack. When it reopened it moved in several days by 5 points. Someone holding 1000 contracts would have reaped five million dollars using one million. International and domestic stock index futures would have reaped over fifteen million using one million. Guess who made the biggest killing on short international and domestic stock index positions? What one group was holding tens of thousands of short positions going into 911 that reaped about 250 billion dollars in the blink of an eye?
Hint! Begins with a G and ends with a T. end quote
read the rest at www.rense.com... or go to
members.aol.com...
cafr1.com...

That's MISLEADING Sauron. THat guy is assuming the "geniuses" in government never lose. Absolutely ludicrous, WHY would they be working for the government if they were that good at picking equities?!

Every government, insurance company and institution that passes billions of dollars through its coffers tries to invest the "spread" (the money that "lingers" between the date it is collected and the date it must be paid out) for a profit to cover potential shortages and new unfunded mandates.

To say that every government has amassed "trillions of dollars" by ALWAYS picking winning investments is simply goofy IMHO.

Look at California's track record.

While it's true that this money in MOST jurisdictions is "off the books" it is certainly NOT hidden from oversight. Public records abound with details of these transactions if you know where to find them.

Every trade on every U.S. exchange is recorded by the contolling body of that exchange (SEC would be the obvious example of one of these bodies), the brokers involved and the companies/municiplaities whose interests were purchased. There's THREE records of every transaction Mr. Burien decries as "hidden" right off the top of my head.

Naturally the Governments are going to win when the bond market moves, they represent the vast majority of the source of bonds.

m...

[edit on 8-2-2004 by Springer]

Originally posted by RANT
I wondered why not a single reporter asked the questions I would.

Will trading on these compainies be suspended? Will all trading be suspended? Should investors worry at all? If no controls are in place, what's to stop an irrational sell off? Or even a rational one?

Then I remembered I sold all my stock to make house payments after 9/11 and busted my 401(k) last year to pay for healthcare.

Someone profits somewhere.

An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.

www.cnn.com...

More here:
www.wanttoknow.info...

Even more interesting because the hard drives and the story 'vanish'. . .
Lack of transparency is not a good sign.

Actualy and increased in the defense spending will make some financial groups profit and I had read some articles that said that one of the groups to benefit from it is the Carlyle Group, not only have ties with Bush family but also with bin laden family.

I guess terrort aterts and security levers is good business after all

[edit on 2-8-2004 by marg6043]

Does anyone think there is a possibility of accounts being frozen? A run on cash? Banking suspended? I really don't want to go drag my money out and stuff it in the mattress, but I'm getting worried that when the time comes for me to use that money for it's intended purpose, it will locked up due to some crisis, or otherwise unavailable. Should I put it in a Canadian bank?

--Saerlaith the long term planner

Edit - after reading further -

quote:
An unexplained surge in transactions was recorded prior to the attacks, leading to speculation that someone might have profited from previous knowledge of the terrorist plot by moving sums of money. But because the facilities of many financial companies processing the transactions were housed in New York's World Trade Center, destroyed in the blasts, it has until now been impossible to verify that suspicion.

www.cnn.com...

Would moving money from one account to another, from US currency to Canadian, and then withdrawing it in cash, get me noticed? I'm talking about 10-15K

[edit on 2-8-2004 by Saerlaith]

Originally posted by Saerlaith
Would moving money from one account to another, from US currency to Canadian, and then withdrawing it in cash, get me noticed? I'm talking about 10-15K

In Canada any money transaction involving over 10k is automatically flagged. So I would recommend that any transaction not exceed 5k for that reason.