The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange said yesterday that the report prepared by two American researchers, which indicates the presence of investors in Israel who may have benefited from their prior knowledge of the attack by the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7, is inaccurate.

Research work conducted by law professors Robert Jackson Jr. of New York University and Joshua Metts of Columbia University alleged that there was a “major conspiracy” through major short-selling of Israeli stocks before the attacks on the New York and Tel Aviv stock exchanges.

They said that “short selling activity has increased significantly over that seen during many other crisis periods” such as the 2008 financial crisis and Covid-19.

They wrote that for investors in Leumi, Israel's largest bank, 4.43 million shares were sold short during the period from September 14 to October 5, generating profits of NIS 3.2 billion ($859 million).

But Reuters quoted the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange as saying that the researchers’ estimates were wrong because the stock prices are listed in agorot, an Israeli financial unit equivalent to one percent of the shekel, which makes the potential short sale profit at only 32 million shekels (one dollar = 3.7243 shekels). .

“I don’t see anything in the data close to what they wrote in the research paper,” said Yaniv Bagot, head of trading at the exchange. “There was nothing unusual in short (short selling) positions on the exchange during the two months before the attack.”

The Israel Securities Authority said in a separate statement that in the days before the Hamas attack, no unusual trading was detected or it would have required further investigation.

On Monday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz claimed, citing a study by American researchers, that people working in the stock market and financial markets were apparently aware of the attack launched by Hamas on October 7, and they reaped billions of dollars from that information.

Haaretz wondered whether the Hamas movement was behind this and made huge sums of money as a result of these financial bets.

She added that major betting operations took place against Israel in the Tel Aviv and Wall Street financial markets, days before the October 7 attack.

She confirmed that these bets generated billions of dollars.

She pointed out that some people seemed to know in advance about Hamas' plan to attack, which plunged the financial markets.

The newspaper considered that the movement may have benefited financially from the matter.

Source: Sama News