The world's stock markets 'knew' 9/11 was coming, a global market researcher claims today.
For 18 months prior to 9/11, the world's financial markets were in continuous decline and then, on September 10, 2001, their values suddenly plummeted, says Herma Koornwinder, from Holland.
As proof – on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 – she is releasing a dramatic sequence of graphs covering the downward trends of the world's stock exchanges in 2000-2001. The day before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, markets worldwide plunged. Significantly, shares of airlines and insurance companies were the most affected.
‘Share prices are the result of human behaviour and that creates patterns that show up in graphs,’ she said. ‘It was as if the markets knew! My research shows that something strange was happening.’
Ms Koornwinder seeks to explode the 'myth' that stock markets collapsed because of 9/11 when, in fact, they cascaded down before the event. Afterwards, they went up.
'It has been put into the collective mind that the markets crashed because of 9/11,' she said. 'It is not the case. There was a shock-wave immediately afterwards but within a few days the markets climbed again.'
Ms Koornwinder has compiled two series of graphs covering 19 indices around the world: one reveals steady decline from March 24, 2000, until the sudden drop on September 10, 2001, and the other shows marked increase soon after September 11, 2001.
Indices covered are Brazil Sao Paolo, Budapest, Buenos Aires, China Hang Seng, Europe Eurostoxx 50, France CAC 40, Germany DAX, Helsinki, Istanbul, Madrid, Milan, Netherlands AEX, Switzerland MSI, Tokyo Nikkei, UK FTSE 100, USA Dow-Jones Industry, USA Nasdaq Composite, USA S&P and World MSCI. These are a sample from 60 indices that Ms Koornwinder researched, all showing a similar pattern.
About Herma Koornwinder
Herma Koornwinder’s life has been one of reading, reflecting, asking questions, not accepting ‘certainties’ as truths, rejecting, researching, developing, checking and putting knowledge to the test.
During the 1980s and 1990s, in Holland, she took up subjects of financial research which included the effectiveness of fundamental and technical analysis as applied to the world’s stock markets, the acceleration and slowdown of economies, cyclic waves and economic regularities and their consequences, and trying to find an explanation for apparent random fluctuations in the markets.
Herma compared and put to the test the ‘vision’ of some 15 national and international investment journals, and also researched the effectiveness of financial investment software. During the course of these studies, Herma discovered the laws and rules of a ‘forcefield’ of underlying energies governing the movement of share prices.
Incorporating this knowledge into a model she developed and tested in laboratory conditions at her consultancy, Koornwinder Global Market Navigation (KGMN), she was able to consistently predict, with great accuracy, the rises and falls of stock markets over a period of ten years. During this time, Herma was working for investment and retirement funds and her analysis in these fields was validated by the accountancy bureau Deloitte & Touche for a five-year period from 1989-94.
As one of Holland’s leading global market analysts Herma gave many interviews and lectures, and was featured in many journals and magazines, and on TV and radio. She took a stand against the efficient-market hypothesis, modern portfolio theory, index investments and random dispersion when the risk was not known.
Geoff Ward - Geoff Ward, MA Lit., is a British journalist, media consultant, author and lecturer/tutor in literature and creative writing
