The Devastating Events Of 9/11 And Their Impact On The 2001 And 2002 Stock Markets

In the early morning of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, in New York City, two commercial airliners collided with then, the tallest buildings in the world, the World Trade Centre towers. There was also another commercial jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon. This devastating event led to a huge rippling effect amoung the people, and stock market investors of the United States. An estimated 2753 innocent people were killed during the September attacks. This act of terrorism caused the New York stock exchange to fall dramatically. Due to the crashes, stock trading was closed until September 17th, the longest shut down since 1933. However the weeks afterwards, many were selling their stocks in companies such as American Airlines, and a multitude of publicly traded corporations with offices in the World Trade Centre. A record was set in the coming weeks, with stocks dropping 7. 1% in the NYSE, the largest ever stock exchange drop in one day.

There is a major conspiracy theory that the terrorist attacks, were actually a planned attack by the United States government and many business insiders. This is believed to be true because just months before the towers went down, the main leaseholder of the towers, Larry Silverstein, purchased anti-terrorism insurance n the buildings. If the buildings were to go down, he would earn 2. 25 Billion US dollars. After the events, he took this to court and instead, received 4. 44 Billion US dollars in insurance, since there were two attacks. There are many other reasons people believe are the causes of these attacks, however the official cause, issued by the United States government states that the attacks were purely due to terrorism.

These events caused the NYSE to go through a major crash, the biggest ever recorded since 1933. There was a major NYSE stock crash during the days after the event. Since the stocks were closed until September 17th, no one was able to exchange their stocks, and prices were not changing in the NYSE.

The stocks crashed because of everyone wanting to sell their stocks in high risk companies at the time, such as American Airlines, who was the owner of all three of the planes that had been involved in the acts of terrorism. People were afraid due to all the negative press these airlines were receiving, that their stock prices will plummet, thus selling them. This crash led to a record breaking reported 1. 4 trillion US dollars in value lost in those five days of trading.