2023年经济学人 疑似有人提前得知哈马斯突袭并卖空股票（在线收听）

    Finance and economics

    财经版块

    Suspicious activity

    可疑活动

    Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?

    谁利用10月7日突袭的消息赚了数百万美元？

    Before its attack on October 7th, Hamas maintained tight operational security.

    在10月7日发动袭击之前，哈马斯将行动计划高度保密。

    The assault blindsided Israel’s spies, and seems to have surprised even Hamas’s political leaders.

    突袭让以色列间谍措手不及，似乎连哈马斯的政治头目都感到惊讶。

    But did someone know enough to profit?

    但是否有人知道了足够多的消息，从而借此获利呢？

    A new paper by Robert Jackson Jr, a former commissioner of America’s Securities and Exchange Commission, and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University suggests so.

    美国证券交易委员会前委员小罗伯特·杰克逊和哥伦比亚大学的约书亚·米茨的一篇新论文表明有人确实知情。

    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.

    两位作者最令人震惊的发现是，在纽约证券交易所上市的一支交易所交易基金(ETF)突然大量卖空（认为证券的价格将会下跌），交易代码为EIS，对应的是以色列股票的一项指数。

    In September an average of 1,581 shares a day of EIS were sold short, representing 17% of the daily total trading volume.

    9月份，平均每天有1581股EIS股票被卖空，占每日总成交量的17%。

    On October 2nd, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820 shares were shorted, representing 99% of total volume.

    10月2日，也就是突袭发生前五天，高达227 820股被卖空，占总成交量的99%。

    Rather than reflecting a souring of market sentiment, the increase in activity seems to have come from just two trades.

    这种交易活动的增加似乎只来自两笔交易，并非反映了市场情绪的恶化。

    Then, on the first trading day after the attack, standard “long” transactions outnumbered short sales by a similar number of shares (248,009).

    然后，在突袭后的第一个交易日，标准的“多头”交易数量超过卖空交易数量，超出的数量与之前相当(为248 009股)。

    If these trades were made by the same investor, they would correspond to a $1m profit.

    如果这些交易是由同一个投资者进行的，那就相当于产生了100万美元的利润。

    Other securities also showed suspicious patterns.

    其他证券也显示出可疑的模式。

    During the three weeks before the attacks, the number of outstanding options contracts expiring on October 13th on American-traded shares of Israeli firms—the derivatives that would yield the greatest returns if prices moved sharply in the direction a trader expected—rose eightfold.

    在突袭发生前的三周，10月13日到期的在美国交易的以色列公司股票的未偿还期权合约数量增加了八倍，如果价格朝着交易者预期的方向大幅波动，这种衍生品将产生最大的回报。

    In contrast, the number of longer-dated options on such shares, whose value depended on events beyond mid-October, barely changed.

    相比之下，期权较长的这类股票的数量几乎没有变化，这种股票的价值取决于10月中旬以后的形势。

    The paper’s authors examined other periods of turmoil in Israel, such as that prompted by the government’s attempted judicial reform earlier this year, and did not detect similar behaviour.

    这篇论文的作者研究了以色列的其他动荡时期，比如今年早些时候政府试图进行司法改革的时期，但没有发现类似的交易行为。

    The only match was in April—two days before Passover, which according to reporting by an Israeli TV station was the date originally scheduled for the attack.

    唯一的类似的行为是在4月份，逾越节的前两天，根据一家以色列电视台的报道，那是最初计划发动突袭的日期。

    Critics of the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest that the activity could reflect investors closing positions on the first day of a quarter, or have been a market-maker’s response to a trader buying up shares in the fund.

    这份报告（尚未进行同行评审）的批评者认为，这些活动可能表示投资者在新季度的第一天结清头寸，或者是做市商对交易员将该股票买入基金的反应。

    Yet no surge has occurred at the start of any other quarter since 2009.

    然而，自2009年以来，其他任何一个季度的前几天都没有出现过这种大量卖空。

    The authors say that had any large purchases of EIS been made to offset the shorts, such transactions would appear in their data.

    两位作者表示，如果为了弥补空头而大量买入了EIS，那么这样的交易会出现在他们的数据中（但实际并未出现）。

    Another objection is that although a big short sale should in theory drive down prices, EIS actually rose in value.

    另一个反对意见是，尽管理论上大量卖空应该会压低价格，但EIS实际上是升值的。

    In response, the authors note that the fund’s value is tied to the prices of the shares it contains, and that the shorts of EIS were tiny in comparison with the market capitalisation of the firms the fund tracks.

    对此，作者指出，该基金的价值与其所含股票的价格挂钩，而且与该基金对应的公司的市值相比，EIS的空头规模微不足道。

    The study has prompted an inquiry by Israel’s securities authority.

    这项研究促使以色列证券监管方展开调查。

    Assigning motives to trading activity is always hard; the authors cannot rule out benign explanations.

    确定交易活动的动机总是很困难的，作者不能排除良性的解释。

    But they argue that the most plausible account is that whoever made the trades was familiar with Hamas’s secrets.

    但他们认为，最可信的说法是，无论是谁进行了交易，这个人都很了解哈马斯的秘密。

    Although the millions of dollars in potential profits are small, Mr Mitts notes they are a lower limit identifiable with public data.

    尽管数百万美元的潜在利润很小，但米茨指出，这是根据公开数据可以识别的利润下限。

    He thinks that they could be “just the tip of the iceberg”.

    他认为这些利润可能只是“冰山一角”。