> In September an average of 1,581 shares a day of eis were sold short, representing 17% of the daily total trading volume. On October 2nd, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820 shares were shorted
It’s misleading to compare an average with an extreme, especially since October 2nd is the first Monday of the month and the fourth quarter (probably books being balanced). It would be better to compare with the maximum in the whole of September or July.
My understanding was that there was a currency error in the original research that vastly overestimated the flow. From fantastic reporting here on the FT.
The article includes a rebuttal to the rebuttal. Basically the trades were a few orders of magnitude out of the ordinary so they looked odd even in such a tiny market.
Who is still in office and thus still benefits, when previouly population heavily protested against their autocratic policies attempts? Might be a good starting point for answering such a question.
The SEC has access to all trade data, but public market trade data doesn’t have any identifying information, time and sales data consists of just that.
For example, ‘bought/sold x units of y instrument at timestamp’. You might also get the exchange it was traded on, and possibly other information depending on who you buy market data from.
The fact that they it hasn't come out who did it makes me half-wonder if it's because it's very embarassing. Maybe someone connected to intelligence agency, rather than someone connected to Hamas.
There are various Twitter accounts tracking daily trades (i.e. calls with single day expiry) and correlating them to the news cycle such as acquisitions and other events with significant price movement implications for specific companies. Basically there is insider trading going on daily where the returns are 100-400x in a single trading day. I think the reality is more simple than we tend to think and the SEC just doesn't have the technical chops nor the time to go after all of these.
> There are various Twitter accounts tracking daily trades (i.e. calls with single day expiry) and correlating them to the news cycle such as acquisitions and other events with significant price movement implications for specific companies.
What are are some of the X/Twitter handles doing that you're talking about?
its probably not that deep, the SEC probably doesn't care or didn't find anything in their purview
fraudulent insider trading requires the trader to have a contract from the company about not disclosing, a terrorist attack doesn't involve that, there are plenty of times when you can trade on non public information. its meant other things before the courts have just narrowed it over and over again
The article's paywalled so I don't know if already mentions it, but the attack took place on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war and also coincided with Simchat Torah.
Hamas and other militant groups have previously used days of historical and religious significance to launch a wave of attacks (usually rockets), so there's a strong chance that some random trader just made an educated guess that an incident would happen on that day and hit the jackpot when the scope of the attack ended up being larger than usual.
I can't read the article, but the intro is interesting.
"The authors’ most striking finding is a surge in short sales—bets that a security’s price will fall—of an exchange-traded fund (etf) listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker eis, which tracks an index of Israeli shares. In September an average of 1,581 shares a day of EIS were sold short, representing 17% of the daily total trading volume. On October 2nd, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820 shares were shorted, representing 99% of total volume. Rather than reflecting a souring of market sentiment, the increase in activity seems to have come from just two trades."
To save anyone the trouble, the article does not identify anyone specifically, only that "the most plausible account is that whoever made the trades was familiar with Hamas’s secrets."
> the increase in activity seems to have come from just two trades.
its interesting how nobody not even a bot was interested in copy-trading that, most likely due to the incredibly low volume, kept everyone else far far away from that ticker
only 15,000 shares traded today. paltry.
curious if they, were they able to cover that short
> curious if they, were they able to cover that short
Volume for EIS on 10/9 (first market day after the attack) was ~341k shares, it’s possible they were on the buy side of 2/3rds of those trades, I’m guessing there was not a lack of sellers on 10/9.
I don’t think is a bot thing but a people thing… when there’s a sudden grow in volume whoever sees that assumes that whoever took that position knows something that they don’t know and thus taking a similar position is often a “sensible” action, even if only to hedge against unknowns…
I think they are valid market participants, everyone is, if it led to more accurate price discovery of the current value of the assets due to the redemption mechanism of the ETF. For example, the decline in the value of shares of both the ETF and underlying companies occurred far after these short sells hit the market, and after that panic induced selling, this short position still had to close out by purchasing shares back, reaching an equilibrium in price sentiment better than the panicking investors could.
The capital controls are the only distortion in the market and they don't even work. It is very simple for a foundation or trust to open the same brokerage accounts anybody else here uses, and just wastes everyone's time trying to sniff out sanctioned entities.
This suggests Israel should have been paying attention to the stocks to figure out when it was going to be attacked. Whomever did this had the distinct possibility of blowing Hamas's opsec if the IDF were slightly more alert about this sort of thing.
