In the wake of the release of the 9/11 Commission report in the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission says that it never found any evidence that anyone profited from foreknowledge of the attacks in the securities market.

At the time, there were rumours of large shorts on airline and insurance stocks ahead of the attacks. The SEC says that it began an investigation on Sept. 12, 2001, to determine whether there was any evidence of that.

Today the SEC said, “In the course of that review, we did not develop any evidence suggesting that anyone who had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks traded on the basis of that information.”

The report itself notes that there also have been claims that al Qaeda financed itself through manipulation of the stock market based on its advance knowledge of the attacks. However, exhaustive investigations by the SEC and others uncovered no evidence of that. “Some unusual trading did in fact occur, but each such trade proved to have an innocuous explanation,” the report notes.

For example, the report notes that a single U.S.-based institutional investor with no conceivable ties to al Qaeda purchased 95% of the UAL put options on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American Airines on September 10. UAL is the parent company of United Airlines. Jets from both carriers were involved in the 9/11 attacks.

“Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S.-based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades,” it says. The reports says that apparently suspicious transactions consistently proved to be innocuous.

The SEC says that it examined more than 9.5 million securities transactions that took place during the weeks preceding September 11. Along with the New York Stock Exchange, NASD, the American Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Pacific Exchange, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, it reviewed trading in securities and derivative products of 103 companies in six industry groups with trading in seven markets. It also reviewed trading in 32 exchange traded funds and broad and narrow indices.