A family friend of mine used to work in private wealth management. One of her jobs was diversification of her clients assets on the stock market.
Out of nowhere she gets a call from a representative of one of her very big private clients to sell all the stocks of a big airline and move the liquidity somewhere else. No buts, and if needed they could sell in up to 5% below market as long as the shares are sold quickly.
This was extremely weird, as the stock price of the company was pretty stable, and specifically this clients portfolio was heavily hedged with this stake, but she didn’t think much of it – oftentimes her clients did this for personal reasons (such as having a bad experience on a plane of the company or etc).
Two days later one of her colleagues that she shared this peculiar story told her how the airline stock price started slowly but surely falling – some people were selling off their shares too, which were gladly bought by the market at increasing prices.
The next day AA Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the WTC in New York. The stock market was closed for another week.
