Some financial investors allegedly “predicted” the October 7 Hamas attack by betting on a drop in shares of Israeli companies days before the terrorist attack, then made huge profits when the drop actually occurred following the outbreak of conflict. The amount of financial transactions recorded was so anomalous that it suggested that investors knew about Hamas’ plans in advance. This was confirmed by two American researchers, Robert J. Jackson Jr. of New York University. and is the conclusion of a study conducted by Joshua Mitts of Columbia University.
According to this analysis, on October 2, five days before the attack, there was an unusual increase in short selling of Israeli company shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Short sales (short selling These are very short-term speculative transactions that investors initiate when they expect to make a profit from stocks that are expected to lose value in a short time. That day, so-called “short positions” in publicly traded Israeli companies had exceeded 200,000 shares. On the contrary, short sales are not uncommon. However, two authors of the study underline that in previous months these never exceeded 10 thousand shares in a day.
The investigation focuses on Israel’s leading bank, Bank Leumi, whose largest stake is state-owned. Between September 14 and October 5, short-term operations carried out on its shares amounted to “4.43 million”, resulting in a “profit of 30 million shekels”, or approximately 7.5 million euros when calculating the value of other Israeli Bank Leumi shares. Businesses collapsed after Hamas attacks. American researchers write that “short positions” on October 2 “far exceed those that occurred during many other crisis periods, including the post-financial crisis recession, the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian war, and the Covid-19 pandemic.”
To find similar highs on the Israeli stock market, you have to go back to April 3. On that day, few people understood the reason for the explosion in short selling. However, it was recently revealed that Hamas planned to carry out its major attack on April 5, that is, two days later, but something went wrong and the terrorist organization postponed the plan for a few months. Jackson Jr. “Our findings suggest that investors who had knowledge of the October 7 attacks before they occurred benefited from these tragic events,” Mitts said.
“Trading with Terrorism?” In the research titled, the answer to the question of whether it is possible to make a profit in the stock market by taking advantage of terrorist acts seems positive. According to two American lawyers, such stock market betting should be approved and banned both in the United States and internationally. “We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Mitts said in an interview CNN – There are many more things that we cannot detect but that regulators need to take into account,” he concludes.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
