Attribution: SensexTodays, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Mark O., Dave S., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
Below is speculation, but there are some facts in the attached chart. It says Hamas made $1-2M off of the attack by selling short in an Israeli ETF fund.
(Chart is contained in link below)
Coincidentally, I just read an educational article about selling short. Its purpose was to remind readers that selling short serves an important market function—though on the surface it appears to be feeding on the weak. I think the 2008 housing market massacre had a Steve Carroll movie that exposed some not so ethical short sales by Goldman Sachs…(did not fact check self on this last bit). Check this out…
Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks? (The Economist)
Dave S.
Short sellers get a bad reputation because they have a habit of selling a stock short and then engaging in a pattern of reputation-destroying misinformation to fulfill their own prophecy.
Certainly there’s got to be an instrument where market participants can express a negative opinion about a security vs the usual positive (a normal buy). Stock options also provide this opportunity. I can purchase a “put” which gives me the right to sell a stock at a specified strike price (up to a specified date). My hope is for the share price to fall below strike price. I then buy the shares at the low price & sell them at the strike price (actually no stock buys or sells take place— it’s all settled financially).
I think you’re talking about The Big Short, starring Christian Bale as the investor who sniffed out the impending ‘08 real estate crash, and who took out a large series of different types of “shorting” transactions. Good flick. Michael Lewis book. When the investor realized that strippers were borrowing big and building homes to sell in Florida, that tipped him over the edge.
Diabolical move there by Hamas. Sounds as if it was them.
BTW, short sellers eventually do have to purchase the stock they’ve shorted. So a large enough “short interest” can provide a floor to a plummeting stock.
Mark M.
I guess I missed it, or maybe there was a link to a story that was omitted. What is the evidence that Hamas executed one or more of these big short purchases in September? The fact that a large short position was taken, and then something happened and large profits were realized, doesn’t make a causal argument or a coordinated action at all convincing. It’s plausible, and perhaps even ingenious, but there has to be more evidence to raise the theory above the “conspiracy” level. I’m just saying that large short positions are taken all the time on all kinds of financial instruments for all kinds of reasons, so taking a backward look at one instance and speculating…
MarkO
Yikes, MarkO. Talk about playing the “devil’s advocate” on this creepy-ass short sale news.
Okay, I reckon it’d be difficult to dig up a brokerage statement showing “Hamas and Associates Investment Group LLC” making that freakishly huge short sale. But someone shorted that Israeli ETF just days before the obviously long-planned terrorist attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens. So whoever did the short sale almost certainly must have known that some seriously bad shit was going to happen to Israel.
Did this unknown party warn anyone or do anything to prevent the attack? Nah. Where’s the money in that? Instead they made the “ingenious” choice of doing a short sale in order to reap obscene profits from the horrifying mass slaughter of music festival-goers.
This short sale strikes me as the cynical gravy for the devil’s food of this latest Israel/Gaza/Hamas conflict. Almost too over-the-top–like it was made by a diabolical “man of wealth and taste”, a Satanic movie villain such as the suave, all-powerful puppet-master played by Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, or DeNiro as Lou Cypher. “Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name/But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game.”
DC
You guys are awesome the way your creative minds can turn everything into a movie plot or musical meme or some other cultural work. I don’t think I have a creative bone in my body.
Analytically, there are dozens of Israel ETFs and the likelihood that none of them would have been massively shorted in any given month is small. The financial markets are a casino and people are always into the action. Take the ETF chart below. Someone made a big short bet in early November. That bettor is losing their ass because all the Israel indices are spiking up in the past month. I like that Hamas profiteering story, but it’s just a story as far as I can tell.
Marko
Agreeing with MO on several accounts:
- Dennis is glib…tied for first with (4) other bots…(that Devil’s advocate line—dang! Why didn’t I think of that?). Further—he (Dennis), weeks ago, raised the notion of a lucrative Hamas, (sidebar), ransom master plan that will likely never be transparent and would benefit only Hamas “leaders” living in Paris, London, Geneva. Dennis would be point guard if we have a revolution “in season tournament”.
- Yet MO is wise to question everything…’specially with stocks, war, Russians—they adore trickery– Iranians, money… So many manipulative games played out there. (Ahem…when I shared this Gaza ‘selling short’ story—from my precious Economist source–I did note “highly speculative”). Who knows…maybe The Economist is on the take?
- And I shouldn’t pick on others. Right here in Wisco we have this fake elector crap (WTF?) admitting they lied but not admitting wrongdoing? Huh? These 10 and the lawyers that wrote the script should do time. Sedition. A serious crime. Our society crumbles w/out a spine. And please don’t fine these children—money is nothing for those that will come to their rescue. Make them do time…in a creepy place…5 years feels appropriate. Put them next to Derek Chauvin. There must be consequences.
-D.
Nothing Hamas would do could surprise me. Actually, from their point-of-view, selling short is probably a shrewd move, and an almost palatable one compared to the atrocities they committed on October 7th. And since. I don’t know much about economics, but aren’t economic warfare strategies (embargoes, freezes, scorched earth, and blockades) as old as warfare itself?
MM is right about Cheseboro. Since he posted, the fake Wisconsin electors have settled a civil suit and AG Kaul (finally) is looking into an investigation. On the other end of this escapade we do have RoJo in DC on January 7th allegedly prepared to deliver the fake slate to Pence. Something smells like Limburger cheese. It’s frustrating that these legal proceedings take so damned long. I would have hoped charges would’ve been brought against Trump a year after his alleged crimes.
Now, with the Colorado Supreme Court decision, we can only hope the SCOTUS is more prompt and less politicized than what we’ve been used to.
G