Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]
img.haarets.co.ilConsidering Qatar (and thus by proxy Hamas and Iran) has access to global markets it’s not clear to me why the assumption here is that these moves came from Israeli leadership and not the more likely source… those planning the slaughter who also wanted to benefit economically and not just in blood.
There is currently no evidence that Iran or Qatar knew about the timing of the attacks, and the US's position is that they don't believe it was known.
See : https://www.reuters.com/world/initial-us-intelligence-shows-...
> Initial U.S. intelligence reports show that some Iranian leaders were surprised by the Islamist group's unprecedented attack from Gaza, U.S. sources said on Wednesday.
> A U.S. official said, however, that Iran, Israel's regional arch-foe, had likely been aware that Hamas was planning to take action against Israel "but without the precise timing or scope of what occurred" last weekend.
It's also a fairly low amount of money for already-rich Qatari royalty to risk running afoul of their access to US markets.
Homie we would have nary a fart of evidence. OSINT is a 5EYES figment to convince us proles it's even remotely feasible to know what is transpiring.
the story is a Rorschach test for your politics -- if big bad globalist bankers control everything, of course they allow their own people to be slaughtered for financial gain
The Egyptian intelligence services repeatedly warned of an incoming attack and the Israelis ignored the warnings. Maybe the information was kicked up by the traders?
> The Egyptian intelligence services repeatedly warned of an incoming attack and the Israelis ignored the warnings.
Parts of Israeli intelligence also had a lot of advanced warning but it was dismissed by higher ups.
Most likely the trading was based on people who either read the internal Israeli intelligence on this topic or the Egyptian stuff. It is unlikely it was Qatar or Hamas associates, but rather more sophisticated actors who were in the Israeli market already and were used to acting on leaked information.
The main issue is how did someone get a date. The warnings I read were all sort of vague in terms of the exact date, rather specifying the high level plan.
Makes me think of when in a trading context I was advised that Russia had moved soldiers close to the borders of Ukraine, some other customers had taken highly leveraged trading positions, and a while later that invasion began, and all the second order effects in the market took place. I don't trade anymore. Curious how some individuals through profit incentive anticipate world events with more agility and foresight than the institutions that lead us
so, when this happened on 9/11 the actual investigation found a stock picking newsletter that had simply called the stock sector for technical analysis reasons
this paper only compares volume to prior campaigns in Israel, and draws a conclusions based on that
additionally it has the bias of saying these are “gaps in enforcement of insider trading laws”, seemingly not understanding that an insider trading law would not cover things occurring outside of a company. nor should it.
its short selling of an ETF over a geopolitical event
so its just as likely any random stock picking newsletter could have called it. there’s even a guy on reddit that says Gaza attacks are based on the moon phase and tried to warn Israel, he happened to be not-inaccurate this time but its totally based on correlations only
I believe it actually says "gaps in U.S. and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading.", then later goes on to say
" But as its name suggests, the U.S. law of insider trading is a poor fit for trading patterns of the kind we document here." (page 38).
So it does seem to understand that insider trading doesn't apply to the data here. I think "informed trading" meaning prior knowledge (not insider company trading) is the relevant point here.
they buried the lede quite far there.
yes, they are trying to shift opinions for this stretch of a case and masquerading it as academic. this is an enthusiast blog post at best, should have just posted it on Seeking Alpha or even just Medium
its good entertainment, they should have left a patreon link at the bottom
Even if not correlated, this is diabolically genius for all state sponsors and financiers of terrorism.
Not sure if it's diabolical genius, it was literally the opening plot point of the bond film Casino Royale
Bond films are notorious for never having what could be colloquially referred to as some kind of diabolical genius involved in the plot.
Maybe so, but they definitely feature Evil Lair fetishists.
it’s not, the instruction manual exists for decades if you like conspiracies.
For anybody close to the topic and knowing how shocked the Israeli society was on Oct 7th, this paper makes a very strong claim that needs more than just circumstantial evidence (higher short trades). Like any circumstantial evidence, many reasons could trigger unusual trading patterns
As the article goes to great lengths to point out, the trades in EIS weren't random. They represented the second highest spike in short trades in the ETF behind April of this year, when it was predicted that Hamas would attack on the eve of Passover. It's difficult to argue that this surge was merely coincidence or statistical noise.
As for the Israeli public at large being informed about these attacks and knowing precisely when they would occur, it would seem they were as astonished as anyone. Whomever made these short trades on Oct 2nd were likely only a handful of informed parties. That's the component of this I'd love to know. Could the SEC determine where these trades originated and were they within a Pro-Hamas country like Lebanon, Iran or... Saudi Arabia? Or did it originate within the intelligence community, acting in bad faith?
It does look interesting, but the fact that it was not even the highest spike in the previous 52 weeks, much less of any longer time period, makes it a lot less impressive than it sounds at first.
Now, I know of no reason why Hamas, Iran, or Russian sources that knew something was about to go off, would not have tried to profit from that (through proxies of one sort or another). But this doesn't quite seem unusual enough to act on. If this kind of spike triggered an alarm, it would have gone off a couple times in the previous 52 weeks alone, and any alarm that has that many false positives will get ignored eventually.
I'm not a professional trader by any means, but I would regard all of these spikes as important seismic activity. On the few occasions I've done options trading, I've looked at level 2 data for peaks just like this. It's just another data point meaning there might be significant movement, but nothing is certain. In this case, I would pull up the calendar of Jewish holidays. Is it nearly Passover - that holiday where the angel of Death went door-to-door? Well, that's a big indicator to me that there could be a terrorist event. The April spike definitely makes sense in that context, along with Egypt's warnings. Oct. 6th-8th is another holiday, not as big. Holidays mean people will be out celebrating in large groups.
All of it combined lends itself to algorithmic early detection systems. The general public should have this security. Not a sure thing, but neither is meteorology.
Society generally being shocked is not inconsistent with a few people secretly not being shocked.
It's interesting but not yet compelling -- there just isn't enough data to support such an explosive claim, but there's enough to at least warrant further investigation. (My skepticism is somewhat heightened by the fact that the paper keeps insisting that their prices are in NIS when they're actually in agorot, basically a cents-not-dollars error on their part. Still talking about millions of dollars in potentially ill-gotten profits, but not nearly the magnitude they allege.)
In case the title confuses someone like me.
The paper suggests that people who knew about the October attacks (so probably not Israelis, we can have a few guesses who) were short selling Israeli companies, as well as index funds based on Israeli companies, just in time. This happened both on US markets and elsewhere. So that while blood was being spilled they lined their pockets. It'd be interesting but I guess impossible to see how much it is later converted to crypto and reinvested into terrorism and how much is just blood profits that get reinvested.
The paper obviously can't tell who is trading and why, so it's not a positive proof, but it'd be interesting to see if money could be followed. Looks like they did a lot of work to eliminate any false signals.
I wish their typography was more readable, that line height is a major pain to read and why is it a PDF for crying out loud.
The SEC knows who is trading, and is likely investigating why.
Ha why is this being flagged?? Evidence of conspiracy flagged as conspiracy.
There's a new "conspiracy theory" on the block to explain this and other events (I do admittedly find it plausible):
It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack, either Israel's previously famous intelligence service was caught completely off guard (despite the warning by Egypt) - or they let it happen, intentionally, as an excuse to raid Gaza as well as improve the popularity of their struggling president.
Thoughts?
(Edit: For those questioning how this would improve the prime minister's or president's approval, few things improve the popularity of a president, or a prime minister, than a declaration of war following a catastrophic event. Bush reached 86% popular support after 9/11.)
Confusing the Israeli president and prime minister shows the level of insight here.
I'm repeating a theory I've heard that sounds interesting, that I'd like more evidence to support or deny, and slipped on a detail. You can see from my other comments I am aware that he is the prime minister and apologize for the oversight.
> I'm repeating a theory I've heard that sounds interesting
Have you heard about the one that says the earth is flat, or even hollow ? Quite interesting isn't it ?
There's no way they let the October 7th that actually happened go off on purpose. They didn't need to take that much of a hit to justify invading a Gaza, and it made them look bad.
Which would leave open the possiblity that they "let it happen" thinking the "it" was something much less substantial, but the motive doesn't really make sense to me, because they didn't need to take a hit at all. Just an accusation that Hamas was planning an attack would have been sufficient pretext.
Israel never could have launched this extensive a military campaign with international support on the basis of an intelligence report from Egypt, Mossad or otherwise. People would say that any time someone wanted to invade a country without provocation, they could just accuse the other side of wanting to attack. It's also possible that Netanyahu knew of a planned attack but not of the severity. Netanyahu is a hawkish zealot, obsessed with reclaiming the West Bank. It's not hard to imagine an aging political leader wanting to take over the settlement as part of his legacy.
I don't think that there is some kind of conspiracy theory here, but there is no reason you'd need an invasion to stop the attack. Simply refraining from moving soldiers outside the Gaza border and into the West Bank would have been sufficient. It was 3000 thousand terrorists with light weapons, it wouldn't have been difficult to stop if Netanyahu hadn't sent so much of the IDF to terrorize civilians in the West Bank and steal their land.
Bibi and a few other far right leaders are on record previously saying that Hamas is an asset, since it divides the Palestinians in Gaza from those in Yehuda and Shomron. In addition to that, it is my personal opinion that Bibi also considered them an asset for elections so that he has someone to oppose and can continually promise to "end Hamas" without ever actually doing it.
That said, if this was an intentional move by Bibi, it backfired severely since his support dropped drastically as a result of the attack (and how poorly he continues to handle it). I've heard there's quite a bit of internal opposition in his party in spite of the fact that most politicians there are just Bibi's bootlickers and that without him the party will likely lose a ton of votes.
Given that he is an incredibly gifted politician, it seems unlikely to me that he made the mistake of thinking that an attack will be good for him, so I find the conspiracy theory to be unlikely.
> as an excuse to raid Gaza
And to answer this one specifically, I don't think Bibi wanted an excuse to raid Gaza since it seems to me like what he wants most is just to continue the current status-quo where peace is impossible. It is possible that others in his current far-right extremist government were looking for such an excuse, but no chance that they would actually get to make that decision.
> as well as improve the popularity of their struggling president.
How does that work ? He's at a record low approval, Israelis want a culprit and he's the default one
>or they let it happen, intentionally, as an excuse to raid Gaza as well as improve the popularity of their struggling president.
If that was the goal, it massively backfired
It could be to improve popularity yes, or it could have something to do with a goal to ethnically cleanse the country..
> It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack
This is an odd way to decribe things considering Gaza is not a state. Its population is mostly refugees who were ethnically cleansed from nearby villages and functionally it operates as a concentration camp preventing those people from trying to return to those villages which are now occupied by settlers.
They're not refugees. They left 70 years ago. If Israel left them back, Israel would devolve into another failed middle eastern state.
For people who don't know, UNRWA says Palestinian refugees are the only ones who are defined as eternal. All children, including adopted (!), of Palestinian refugees are Palestinian refugees, and so on to eternity. [1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA#Definition_of_refugee
Palestinian refugees have to stay refugees because they are stateless. Stateless refugees, unless they can find some other citizenship and therefore no longer are just Palestinian - and they often can't, must remain refugees for eternity. Since children normally inherit citizenship, that goes for their children too, until they are something other than Palestinian, nationality-wise.
And they didn't "leave". They were ethnically cleansed.
per unrwa, palestinians that have citizenship of whatever other country still remain listed as refugees.
> Israel would devolve into another failed middle eastern state.
Ignoring the obvious racism here, in what sense is Israel a successful middle eastern state? It regularly attacks its neighbouring countries. It keeps 2.3 million people in a ghetto and millions others in bantustans in the West Bank. It's huge source of instability in that region and is dependent diplomatically, economically and militarily on the US.
> It regularly attacks its neighbouring countries.
That's a problem for neighbouring countries, not Israel. USA also regularly attacks... whoever she wishes, really.
> It keeps 2.3 million people in a ghetto and millions others in bantustans in the West Bank
Also not Israel's problem.
>It's huge source of instability in that region
Islamic fundamentalism is a huge source of instability in that region.
> It's huge source of instability in that region and is dependent diplomatically, economically and militarily on the US.
Your ignorance is amazing.
> If Israel left them back, Israel would devolve into another failed middle eastern state.
If I let the man out of the cage in my attic my home life is going to be a lot worse. He's still a caged man though.
It might not be a state, but it is a "polity" (politically identifiable identity).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip
Also, it has been de facto ruled by Hamas since (edit: 2007) despite formally being under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Ok.. but "Gaza" did not collectively plan anything and it still functions as a concentration camp even if it has internal governance.
We know that the Bush administration faked evidence of WMDs in Iraq, starting a war that ultimately killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It is not on its face preposterous that Netanyahu would have his own people slaughtered as part of some game.
Netanyahu has long supported Hamas, both politically and financially. At a Likud meeting in 2019, he said "Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy." He was entirely willing to support those who killed Israelis if he thought it was useful to him.
(The story was originally from Haaretz, but that's paywalled.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/world/middleeast/peace-ac...
But if he welcomed this attack, it backfired dramatically and predictably. I can't see that anyone could think it would help Netanyahu politically. If the goal were to brutalize the people of Gaza, perhaps, but Israel hasn't generally needed much pretext to brutalize the people of Gaza.
He could just be desperate. He is looking at prison time for corruption, after all.
Politicians failing to read the writing on the wall, then overcorrecting and acting devoid of all humanity and only for selfish reasons is the norm, sadly. What the conspiracy theory is doing, is proposing this to be a clever move, when selfishness and stupidity also suffice as explanation.
> selfishness and stupidity also suffice as explanation
The problem though is that almost all societies, before us, considered stupidity to not be an excuse for any crime, for similar reasons to "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." This was because, as another principle I'm forgetting the name of points out, stupidity is indistinguishable from competently-executed malice. If competently-executed malice is always explained away as stupidity, there's no such thing as malice. (The only obvious exception, of course, being manifest insanity.)
Politicians conveniently suffer from amnesia, when pressed on some issues, concerning money, who they have met or what was shared with them. That is to say stupidity works as an excuse, even though we don't like it.
"Competently-executed" is taking it too far. Look at the mess, it's all childish and cruel.
There is another one concerning stupidity. It is that stupidity and love can not be differentiated from the outside. Not knowing if you are in love or just stupid, is in essence a heartbreak.
Imagine sending help in form of water, food or school equipment to children in a warzone being equated to aiding terrorism.
The idea that they let it happen is insane. Oct 7 is the biggest Jewish disaster since the Holocaust. Who would want that on his resume?
This is a classical conspiracy theory. Things can't just fall through the cracks, it's always someone behind the scenes directing things.
Both Bibi and Hamas leaders are corrupted war criminals, that can only gain political dividends if the conflict escalates and will go to jail if it gets peacefully resolved.
IMHO there's a good chance that Bibi and his friends were warned about the incoming big Hamas attack by Mossad and/or other Israeli agencies. Would Bibi act to prevent it or use it to stay in power and potentially get rid of the Palestinians in Gaza?
Why do you think there is a good chance?
Because Mossad is one of the best in the world and they were reporting of suspicions Hamas activity. An Egyptian official also warned Israel of incoming Hamas attack. The attack took years to prepare.
"The groups carried out joint drills in Gaza which closely resembled the tactics used during the deadly assault - including at a site less than 1km (0.6 miles) from the barrier with Israel - and posted them on social media.
They practised hostage-taking, raiding compounds and breaching Israel's defences during these exercises, the last of which was held just 25 days before the attack."
Well, look at Gaza. If you are Israel, you hate that it exists (and of course, vice versa).
In 2006, Gaza had the borders closed and was sealed in. Gaza's population was 473,257 people. Instead of giving in, Gaza decided to have a lot of children, resulting in a population of 2.048 million people as of 2020.
Kind of a failure on multiple levels. And now all those people want to kill you for what you did to them. That sucks. Your prime minister who has served for over 16 years is taking the blame with about ~20% popularity. Things need to be fixed.
One day, you wake up, and find out Gaza's planning an attack. And for once, instead of responding forcefully, you decide: What if we did nothing? They attack, we respond with the world behind our backs, and solve this problem.
I'm not saying that what's happened. It just seems plausible.
This kind of thinking reminds me of Loose Change 9/11 conspiracy about how 9/11 was an inside job. Do you agree that there is parallels in the conspiracy theories?
I don't buy into the grander conspiracy, but it does seem increasingly likely Israeli leadership "knew about it." It has been now well-reported that Israeli intelligence got multiple warnings both from their own SIGINT and from Egypt. They essentially had the blueprint for the plans a year ago, they observed a huge training exercise that was identical to the plan a few months ago.
Now the problem with retrospectively "knowing about things" is that it's hard to account for the thousand other threats these people are constantly being made aware of and which ultimately don't materialize. Or at least I presume that's the case.
From what I've read, even Hamas' own leaders were unaware of the Oct 7 attack planning. Maybe the Israeli equivalent of the SEC can figure out who placed these trades.
Egyptian intelligence knew about it and warned. Moreover there were detailed plans known already about a year earlier: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-h...
This is kind of similar, but smaller in scale, to how Ukraine was surprised that there was actually a push on Kyiv from the north with an attempt at decapitating the state. It's one thing to have the intelligence at hand, it's another to have the political power circle believe it.
What’s the track record of Egypt’s predictions though? Is it like economists predicting 13 of the last 2 recessions?
First time I'm hearing about this. What an incredible failure from the Israelis.
There was never a plan to decapitate the Ukrainian state. That is utterly absurd when you consider there were Russian intelligence assets in Zelensky’s inner circle for a very long time. Russia could have killed him day 1 if they wanted to (or before). Encircling Kyiv was merely for negotiating pressure. As evidenced by them withdrawing from that position as part of the ceasefire negotiations in Turkey in the Spring of 2022– the ones that the US and UK undermined, recently confirmed by additional parties.
[citation needed]. A decapitation strike doesn't just remove the leader, it needs to remove the whole (or a significant part) of the government. Additionally Russia likely wanted to replace it with a puppet.
It likely wasn't the primary objective, but most likely was an important one.
So they left a strong wartime leader in place for their enemy for their upcoming war? Why? Since you’re so sure about intelligence capabilities, why couldn’t the West have known and taken precautions?
“Strong wartime leader”? The guy is an actor. Also, he was elected on a platform of making peace. It was the right wing neonazis who scared him into backing off of the platform he was elected on.
There were multiple assassination attempts at Zelensky, they just failed. Allegedly he was even protected at some point by foreign commandos (possibly French), but this is still rumours. There were also kill lists found when the russian army retreated from Kyiv, clearly aiming at killing the "upper classes" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre for a historic example). BTW, this is what "de-nazification" actually means - purging the elites of their western, meaning "nazi", influences. After all the great nation of Russia is never attacking, always defending, this time again from the evils of the "collective west" meaning "nazi".
Russia withdrew because it turned out that their forces are (or at least were) utterly incompetent, and they just cannot continue. They got beaten up. I wish they stayed longer to lose more troops and equipment.
>There were multiple assassination attempts at Zelensky, they just failed.
Do you have an example of one of these attempts from a credible source?
These trades were done in US exchanges and would fall under SEC. But considering they didn't investigate all the shorts before 9/11 it's doubtful they'll do much here.