Live data from Hacker News

Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

img.haarets.co.il

51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#51
post #35

[flagged]

Is this implying that these kinds of events are politically advantageous to pro-settlement and native-displacement factions in Parliament? Get attacked, retaliate with orders-of-magnitude more force, and drive natives out of their homes and into progressively smaller and more-fragmented reservations?

I have a hard time following the logic here.

"Natives" (wut?) start 3 wars with the explicit goal to exterminate an entire nation. They lose all the wars they started (which comes with losing some territory, which is often the case when one loses a war) and that's somehow the fault of the country under attack?

So the winning party was supposed to give the losing party extra land for their effort of attempting to exterminate them or what is the idea here?

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#52

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?

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#53
post #35

[flagged]

Is this implying that these kinds of events are politically advantageous to pro-settlement and native-displacement factions in Parliament? Get attacked, retaliate with orders-of-magnitude more force, and drive natives out of their homes and into progressively smaller and more-fragmented reservations?

Arabs are not natives in Gaza, or anywhere in the Levant.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#55

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 impos…

The SEC knows who is trading, and is likely investigating why.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Irish people are not native to Dublin either, but somehow it’s still our capital and not full of Danish people

Indeed. How does that disprove what I said?

Palestinians are not native to Jerusalem, neither are Irish people native to Dublin.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#57

[flagged]

Israel has been in political turmoil for nearly three years, in the last 6 months half the country was refusing to show up for reserve duty, this was purely an organizational failure, Hamas took advantage of a dip in readiness, trying to spin this into some web of conspiracies just continues to infantilize a group that has committed enormous atrocities against their own people for decades now.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#58
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance_of_the_Gaza_Strip

Ok.. but "Gaza" did not collectively plan anything and it still functions as a concentration camp even if it has internal governance.

Re: Spike in short selling in Israeli-company ETF days before Oct 7 [pdf]

#60
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Post reply on HN