By Ben Bartee
Armageddon Prose
December 8, 2023
The results of a statistical analysis below, published in the Social Science Research Network, point quantitatively to prior knowledge among certain actors of the impending October 7 attack who, working on apparent inside knowledge, engaged in the short-selling of various stocks to a windfall of millions of dollars.
("Short selling," for the uninitiated, is the act of "borrowing" a stock from a broker and selling it with the expectation that the price will drop and then buying and returning it at a lower price for profit. In simpler times, it had a simpler name: usury. Jesus tossed with extreme prejudice the "money-changers" out of the temple because he recognized them are degenerate scum who produce nothing of value to society but parasitically suck up its capital with their various sordid schemes. Were I coronated, these people would be the first on the wall, which is why they'd have me killed before I got close to power. Alas, this tangent is a story for another day.)
Via Social Science Research Network:
"Recent scholarship shows that informed traders increasingly disguise trades in economically linked securities such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Linking that work to longstanding literature on financial markets' reactions to military conflict, we document a significant spike in short selling in the principal Israeli-company ETF days before the October 7 Hamas attack. The short selling that day far exceeded the short selling that occurred during numerous other periods of crisis, including the recession following the financial crisis, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, we identify increases in short selling before the attack in dozens of Israeli companies traded in Tel Aviv. For one Israeli company alone, 4.43 million new shares sold short over the September 14 to October 5 period yielded profits (or approximates avoided losses) of millions on that additional short selling for one out of hundreds of securities traded on the TASE...
Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events, and consistent with prior literature we show that trading of this kind occurs in gaps in U.S. and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading. We contribute to the growing literature on trading related to geopolitical events and offer suggestions for policymakers concerned about profitable trading on the basis of information about coming military conflict."
It should be noted that the authors of this study, Robert J. Jackson, Jr. and Joshua Mitts, are the Former Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a respected scholar at Columbia Law School - hardly what one might call your typical "right-wing domestic terrorist conspiracy theorist" or whatever.
Given the damning implications, the narrative control coming out of Israel appears frenzied and contradictory. Blue Buffalo Health Ba... Buy New $4.98 ($0.31 / oz)
Via Reuters:
"The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange said on Tuesday a report by U.S. researchers suggesting there were investors in Israel who may have profited from prior knowledge of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack was inaccurate and its publication irresponsible."
The Times of Israel, alternatively, suggests that all of the short-selling was conducted by Hamas-affiliated operatives: "A recent study found that the Hamas terror group may have tried to profit off its October 7 assault on Israel, using advance knowledge of the attack to short-sell Israeli companies in the days leading up to the massacre."
Even if one accepts the narrative that Hamas and its allies let in on the plan were entirely responsible for the nearly unprecedented short-selling (surpassing that of various other crises in recent history, as explained by Jackson and Mitts) - even though there's no evidence of that - one would expect that Israeli intelligence, were it vigilant, would have pricked its ears up in the many days of the short-selling bonanza starting as early as September 14.
Instead, there are no reports of any investigations into the short-selling leading up to October 7, nor any official inquiry since.
The totality of evidence, as it mounts, which I have diligently chronicled, continues to make mincemeat of the official story that the Israeli government - home of arguably the most vaunted national security apparatus on Earth, engaged in constant, near-total surveillance of the Gaza Strip - was caught unawares on October 7.
Reprinted with the author's permission.