[HN Gopher] Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?
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Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?
Author : lxm
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-12-29 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| mcguire wrote:
| I can't read the article, but the intro is interesting.
|
| " _The authors' most striking finding is a surge in short sales--
| bets that a security's price will fall--of an exchange-traded
| fund (etf) listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker
| eis, which tracks an index of Israeli shares. In September an
| average of 1,581 shares a day of EIS were sold short,
| representing 17% of the daily total trading volume. On October
| 2nd, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820 shares were
| shorted, representing 99% of total volume. Rather than reflecting
| a souring of market sentiment, the increase in activity seems to
| have come from just two trades._ "
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > the increase in activity seems to have come from just two
| trades.
|
| its interesting how nobody not even a bot was interested in
| copy-trading that, most likely due to the incredibly low
| volume, kept everyone else far far away from that ticker
|
| only 15,000 shares traded today. paltry.
|
| curious if they, were they able to cover that short
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > curious if they, were they able to cover that short
|
| Volume for EIS on 10/9 (first market day after the attack)
| was ~341k shares, it's possible they were on the buy side of
| 2/3rds of those trades, I'm guessing there was not a lack of
| sellers on 10/9.
| next_xibalba wrote:
| > copy-trading
|
| Is this a common bot strategy? I've never heard of this (not
| that I would--I only casually follow finance).
| belter wrote:
| I only know of two similar strategies:
|
| - Check Goldman Sachs recommendations and do the opposite.
|
| - Hear Jim Cramer recommendations and do the opposite.
|
| These two never failed to make money.
| _benj wrote:
| I don't think is a bot thing but a people thing... when
| there's a sudden grow in volume whoever sees that assumes
| that whoever took that position knows something that they
| don't know and thus taking a similar position is often a
| "sensible" action, even if only to hedge against
| unknowns...
|
| Source: best friend trades for a living
| SoftTalker wrote:
| To save anyone the trouble, the article does not identify
| anyone specifically, only that "the most plausible account is
| that whoever made the trades was familiar with Hamas's
| secrets."
| arkadiyt wrote:
| Just turn off javascript and it'll bypass their paywall
| noloblo wrote:
| unpaywall : https://archive.ph/3Nk0U
| rainworld wrote:
| http://archive.today/2023.12.28-162826/https://www.economist...
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20231229204119/https://www.econo...
| ajsfoux234 wrote:
| The article does not provide any direct evidence that trades were
| made with knowledge of the attacks. Also see a refutal at
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67628380
| jandrese wrote:
| The article includes a rebuttal to the rebuttal. Basically the
| trades were a few orders of magnitude out of the ordinary so
| they looked odd even in such a tiny market.
| dataangel wrote:
| It's very sus but $1M isn't a huge profit by trading standards.
| If they knew what was coming why didn't they bet more?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Maybe they didn't have more.
| lxm wrote:
| EIS is a thinly traded ETF.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If they knew what was coming why didn't they bet more?
|
| The higher the payout, the more likely that government will
| come knock on your door.
| jandrese wrote:
| This suggests Israel should have been paying attention to the
| stocks to figure out when it was going to be attacked. Whomever
| did this had the distinct possibility of blowing Hamas's opsec if
| the IDF were slightly more alert about this sort of thing.
| netsharc wrote:
| They had a lot of intel, but thought an attack of such
| magnitude was beyond Hamas' capabilities:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/28/israeli-milita...
|
| Or: https://www.yahoo.com/news/women-spotters-said-hamas-
| prepari...
| adtac wrote:
| > In September an average of 1,581 shares a day of eis were sold
| short, representing 17% of the daily total trading volume. On
| October 2nd, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820
| shares were shorted
|
| It's misleading to compare an average with an extreme, especially
| since October 2nd is the first Monday of the month and the fourth
| quarter (probably books being balanced). It would be better to
| compare with the maximum in the whole of September or July.
| Baldbvrhunter wrote:
| or previous peaks and the factors around those
|
| and what if these particular traders had a habit of big bets
| and got lucky this time
|
| a bit like "these guys predicted the crash" and no-one looks at
| their other predictions
| rzmmm wrote:
| Arent stock market transactions public information or am I
| mistaken? Someone could find out who did the shorting?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The SEC has access to all trade data, but public market trade
| data doesn't have any identifying information, time and sales
| data consists of just that.
|
| For example, 'bought/sold _x_ units of _y_ instrument at
| _timestamp_ '. You might also get the exchange it was traded
| on, and possibly other information depending on who you buy
| market data from.
| im3w1l wrote:
| The fact that they it hasn't come out who did it makes me half-
| wonder if it's because it's very embarassing. Maybe someone
| connected to intelligence agency, rather than someone connected
| to Hamas.
| reedf1 wrote:
| My understanding was that there was a currency error in the
| original research that vastly overestimated the flow. From
| fantastic reporting here on the FT.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/cee5e4fd-2353-4958-a5f8-c4a802024...
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| The article's paywalled so I don't know if already mentions it,
| but the attack took place on the 50th anniversary of the Yom
| Kippur war and also coincided with Simchat Torah.
|
| Hamas and other militant groups have previously used days of
| historical and religious significance to launch a wave of attacks
| (usually rockets), so there's a strong chance that some random
| trader just made an educated guess that an incident would happen
| on that day and hit the jackpot when the scope of the attack
| ended up being larger than usual.
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(page generated 2023-12-29 23:01 UTC)