Sixty-six pages. The document is extremely long, detailed and shocking, recounting a series of millionaire stock market speculations immediately before and after the Hamas massacre of October 7. The study, published by the magazine “Ssrn” and signed by Robert J. Jackson Jr. of New York University School of Law and Joshua Metts of Columbia Law School, claims that some traders, linked to terrorists, earned millions of dollars knowing for the first weeks what would happen to Israel. like? By selling, without owning (i.e. “shorting”), shares of Israeli companies. “Traders knew Hamas’ plan and predicted future events days before the attack,” the two researchers say in the report that cites the exchange-traded fund (ETF) index, which peaked on October 2 based on data from the Israeli sector authority. So far, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has denied this issue, but Reuters confirmed that “the matter is known to the Israeli Securities Authority (ISA), which is responsible for regulating the financial market, and it is under investigation.”
Hamas and the real spoils of war
The report published by the two professors in New York documents how an anonymous trader sold 4.43 million shares in Bank Leumi, the largest Israeli bank, short between September 15 and October 5, betting that the share price would fall.
After the attack, Leumi’s stock price actually collapsed and made a profit of nearly $900 million. Short sales exceeded those that occurred during other crisis periods, such as the 2008 recession, the 2014 sector war, and then the pandemic. “Our findings suggest that traders who knew of impending attacks profited from these tragic events, and consistent with previous literature, we show that trades of this type occur in gaps in US and international implementation of legal bans on informed trading,” the experts write. Another trader made as many as 227,000 short sales on October 2 against EIS (Enterprise Investment Plan), a security traded on the New York Stock Exchange. “The value of the EIS – we read in the report – decreased by 7.1% on October 11, the first day that the American market opened after the attack, and in the first month it lost 17.5% of its value, which means that this trader made good profits from the trades of October 2.” According to the researchers, there was a strong and unusual increase in short-term options trading on Israeli companies just before the attacks. “It is highly unlikely that the volume of short sales on October 2 occurred by chance,” the two professors highlighted.
The (crypto) financing network that fuels terrorists
“Hamas, which the United States has declared a terrorist organization since 1997, cannot conduct free market transactions,” wrote Britain’s Daily Mail. “Any Hamas figure who attempts to do so risks having their assets frozen by the US Treasury.” For this reason, the organization has taken advantage of innovative financing systems, such as cryptocurrencies. From abroad, the militia receives the necessary support to challenge the security of the Jewish state. A Wall Street Journal report highlighted that between August 2021 and June 2023, three terrorist groups (Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah) collectively received more than $134 million in cryptocurrencies. According to the newspaper, “Hamas obtained approximately $41 million in digital currencies over a period of approximately two years.” The Islamic Jihad movement received $93 million. Duran circumvents sanctions and complicates the destruction of Hamas’ war machine.
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