On anniversary, stock market closes at exact 9/11 level
Eerie coincidence or coded Wall Street tribute?
Aaron Dykes
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, September 12, 2009
FDR famously said, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Whether or not that mantra extends to business, everyday life or the ‘free’ market is up for debate, and perhaps subject to one’s personal convictions.
At any rate, the stock market, at the center of today’s economic crisis, closed on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 at nearly the exact same level the Dow Jones industrial average was at the day of that tragedy. Was this an eerie coincidence or some kind of coded Wall Street tribute?
As the AP, Forbes and others reported, Friday’s market closed within a tenth of a point of the closing figure on September 10, 2001:
“The Dow Jones industrial average is down 22 at 9,605.41. That is nearly identical to the Dow’s finish of 9,605.51 eight years ago, the day before the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.”
As CNN Money points out, the market never opened on 9/11, or for the next four trading days, so that figure was technically in place on that fateful and tragic day:
“Financial markets never opened on Sept. 11, 2001, and remained closed for the next four trading sessions. When stocks began trading again on Sept. 17, the results were predictably gloomy. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 684.71 points, its biggest one-day point loss in history.”
It may also be interesting to note that the one year anniversary of Lehman Brother’s collapse, signpost of the financial meltdown, also occurs this weekend.
Not being one for cosmic coincidences or Jungian synchronicities, I’d sooner hedge my bets on backroom, manmade manipulation (though I could hardly say for sure).
After all, this kind of thing is possible: With the arrest of Sergei Aleynikov came the revelations that Goldman Sachs possessed software whose complex algorithm is capable of massive, real time market manipulation. As The Agonist reported:
“A case of financial espionage raises questions about Wall Street’s proprietary trading practices and exactly what role they play in the market. The perpetrator of the espionage, Sergei Aleynikov, is a former computer programmer and equity specialist at Goldman Sachs. He is alleged to have downloaded secret software at Goldman that is used to direct large volume, rapid-fire trades to exchanges and commodity markets, often just before the close of regular trading.”
Besides, these kind of eerie coincidences are nothing new.
Two extremely strange and unlikely events occurred right around 9/11’s first anniversary. One day before September 11, 2002, The S&P 500 futures contract closed at 911.00. The very next day, on 9/11/02, defying all odds, the New York lotto drew 9-1-1 as the winning numbers.
“It was bizarre, it was strange, but it wasn’t manufactured,” said Richard Canlione, vice president of institutional financial futures at Salomon Smith Barney, the AP reported about the uncanny S&P closing.
The AP also reported, “The numbers were picked in the standard random fashion using all the same protocols,” said lottery spokeswoman Carolyn Hapeman. “It’s just the way the numbers came up.”
Attribute it to numerology or whatever else you like, but these occurrences are certainly unusual.
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