A study by Prof. Robert Jackson, Jr. of New York University and Prof. Joshua Mitts of Columbia University revealed that many Israeli ETFs and stocks were sold relatively unusually mere days before the October 7th surprise attack.
The study discovered that days prior to the attack, short selling transactions were taking place at the NYSE and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at an unusual scope: Short trades of Israeli EFTs such as EIS, which are meant to track leading Israeli stocks, and the sale of stocks in specific Israeli companies directly.
For example, the researchers pointed to a cluster of short trades of stocks of Israeli Bank Leumi before the war, at a scope of about 4.3 billion NIS, and yielded about 3.2 million NIS in the following days.
According to the study, such a sale is a significant indication that certain holders of Israeli assets knew about the October 7th attacks, and they may be senior Hamas operatives.
The study joins a list of additional evidence about the attack that has been published recently. It circumstantially binds the terror group and the trades, assuming that other factors, such as Iran and Hezbollah, did not know about the timing of the attack.