Quote:
Originally Posted by LetsGambool
The academic paper showed trading that could be consistent with someone knowing about the attacks in advance. Stats can't prove someone knew in advance, which is why when spastically anomalous trades are flagged the government investigates the people who made those trades further.
No. The paper showed that the trading IS (not could be) consistent with someone knowing about the attacks in advance
to a degree of certainty. It's true that the analysis of the paper cannot prove someone associated with the trades knew about the attacks in advance. But it can show the degree of likelihood to which this is true. The likelihood found in this paper is well within the convention of what is considered significant or compelling. So for example if this paper was analyzing the effectiveness of a drug designed to give someone the ability to predict stock prices, based on the data alone, the researcher would say the drug works. In practice they would still suspect insider trading but let's just assume they rule that out in the design somehow. (I know that example is too abstract for you...queue the charges of deuces thinking future predicting drugs exist).
Quote:
Originally Posted by LetsGambool
The government investigated the people who actually made the trades and found no link.
This is factually false and you would know that if you had bothered to read the heavily redacted memorandum you linked to and in which you place so much faith. The government, in this case meaning at least the SEC and the FBI,
interviewed the traders but did not investigate them. There is a difference and it's not trivial or semantic. If you polled any group outside of an insane asylum asking whether they would rather be interviewed or investigated by an law enforcement or regulatory agency, you can be assured there would be a near 100% complete bias toward opting for just the interview.
What the report says is that the traders, whose identities are not revealed, gave them some alternative reasons why they invested the way they did and that the SEC chose to believe their story. But we don't know the reasoning and we can't read the interview. Unlike in the academic paper, there is no work shown at all and that is my problem with the information that the government offers up as their investigation. They only tell us what to think, not why to think it. There is literally nothing but unsupported claims in what you linked, which is, again, a "
memorandum that
summarizes the
scope and
results". This is not the SEC investigation investigation report itself. That is classified. They will let us see that in 50 years when we all have Alzheimer's. And as far as the scope goes btw, they refuse to even give the list of what other countries they worked with. So that tells you something about the scope of what they reveal about their scope.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LetsGambool
The paper does not imply that the financial analyst community has come to a general consensus that traders knew of 9/11 in advance.
That is your opinion, which you have yet to support. Yet you keep bringing it up. It's important to you, isn't it? what the consensus among the authority figures is, huh? We can disagree on the implication of consensus in the paper. But the fact remains that very many highly respected experts across a variety of disciplines believe that there was insider trading.