CNN
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Israel’s prime securities regulator stated in an up to date assertion on Tuesday that it has not detected suspicious buying and selling exercise on the Israeli inventory trade within the days main as much as the October 7 Hamas assault.
The assertion from the Israel Securities Authority (ISA) raises questions on a number of the findings in a analysis paper launched Monday that discovered an unusual spike in bets against Israeli securities simply earlier than the assault.
Nevertheless, that analysis, from professors at New York College and Columbia College, didn’t solely concentrate on buying and selling on the Tel Aviv Inventory Alternate. As a substitute, it relied closely on brief promoting exercise on a fund listed in New York, and Israeli regulators didn’t evaluate that buying and selling.
The Israel Securities Authority (ISA) stated Tuesday that its expertise intelligence system, which recurrently displays buying and selling, didn’t uncover “important buying and selling abnormalities” that required additional investigation previous to the fear assault.
A proactive examination, carried out instantly following October 7, equally didn’t “wield any findings” suggesting “suspicious buying and selling exercise,” the ISA assertion stated.
The Israeli regulator stated it did reexamine buying and selling a number of weeks in the past after it turned conscious of forthcoming analysis. The ISA stated its reexamination “didn’t increase any issues concerning suspicious exercise on the inventory trade in Israel throughout the related days.”
Actually, the ISA stated it discovered that the typical brief balances for shares traded on the Tel Aviv Inventory Alternate declined throughout the interval simply earlier than October 7.
Against this, the NYU and Columbia analysis discovered that bets in opposition to Israeli securities trades in Tel Aviv “elevated dramatically.”
The brand new analysis, which has not been peer reviewed, relied closely on brief promoting in a preferred fund linked to Israeli corporations. That fund, the MSCI Israel Alternate Traded Fund (ETF), trades on the New York Inventory Alternate, not in Tel Aviv.
ISA famous in its assertion that it supervises buying and selling in Israel and its findings on suspicious buying and selling “replicate solely buying and selling exercise in Israel.”
The US Securities and Alternate Fee informed CNN on Monday that it doesn’t verify the existence or nonexistence of investigations. The Monetary Trade Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Wall Road’s self-regulator, equally stated it doesn’t touch upon whether or not or not it’s conducting an investigation.
The preliminary analysis, which hasn’t been peer reviewed, discovered within the days earlier than the Hamas assaults that bets in opposition to the worth of the MSCI Israel Alternate Traded Fund (ETF) “far exceeded” the brief promoting exercise that passed off throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2014 Israel-Gaza warfare and even the 2008 monetary disaster.
“Our findings counsel that merchants knowledgeable in regards to the coming assaults profited from these tragic occasions,” the authors wrote.
Yaniv Pagot, head of buying and selling on the Tel Aviv Inventory Alternate, stated in an earlier assertion to CNN on Tuesday that the paper revealed an “unfamiliarity with the native market” as a result of researchers incorrectly calculated the estimated revenue from shorting one specific Israeli firm.
The professors beforehand estimated that bets in opposition to Financial institution Leumi within the days earlier than the October 7 assaults would have generated earnings of billions of {dollars}. A corrected model of the analysis, despatched to CNN on Monday, fastened that mistake and estimated the earnings from that commerce within the tens of millions of {dollars}.
“It is a flawed evaluation from the outset and there’s a lack of expertise of how the native market operates,” Pagot stated.
Specialists urged regulators to analyze the matter, together with by nonpublic market information that researchers didn’t have entry to.
“Clearly, there was one thing troubling some giant buyers,” Charles Whitehead, a professor at Cornell Regulation Faculty, informed CNN.
Whitehead famous there’s a lengthy historical past of refined buyers buying and selling based mostly on “anticipated, future catastrophic occasions.” He pointed to merchants within the Eighties who shorted the inventory of insurance coverage corporations that had important publicity to actual property in San Francisco. These merchants then profited after the area was hit by an earthquake in 1989.
“In fact, that’s fairly completely different from buying and selling based mostly on inside information of terrorist assaults,” Whitehead stated. “Whether or not that was tied to information of terrorist exercise requires a greater understanding of who was buying and selling and the character of the buying and selling exercise throughout the lead-up to the Hamas terrorist assault.”
– CNN’s Gayle Harrington and Tamar Michaelis contributed to this report