Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks? | Elon Musk’s messiah complex may bring him down | If You Think Downsizing Might Save Your Company, Think Again | If Social Security benefits were cut, here's how much more you'd need to save for retirement

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Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks? - The Economist

Before its attack on October 7th, Hamas maintained tight operational security. The assault blindsided Israel’s spies, and seems to have surprised even Hamas’s political leaders. But did someone know enough to profit? 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.

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. Then, on the first trading day after the attack, standard “long” transactions outnumbered short sales by a similar number of shares (248,009). If these trades were made by the same investor, they would correspond to a $1m profit.

Other securities also showed suspicious patterns. 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. In contrast, the number of longer-dated options on such shares, whose value depended on events beyond mid-October, barely changed.

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Elon Musk’s messiah complex may bring him down - The Economist

Every few days a Falcon 9 rocket takes off to ferry satellites into orbit. You might think it would feel commonplace by now. Not for the crowds gathered at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on December 1st. First came the exhilaration. The sight of the rocket blazing through the sky, then dropping its reusable first stage, with Mary Poppins-like grace, onto the launch site provoked gasps of awe, as did the sonic boom that followed. “It never gets old. It’s like being at an AC/DC concert,” a bystander murmured. Then came the realisation of the accomplishment. This spacecraft had a geopolitical payload: it carried South Korea’s first spy satellite, trying to catch up with North Korea days after the hermit state reportedly put its own spyware into orbit. It also had a scientific one: it took Ireland into the space age, by carrying the country’s first satellite, built by students at University College Dublin.

It was lost on no one that they had Elon Musk to thank for the spectacle. At the same time, the almost unwavering reliability of the engineering marvels the founder of SpaceX, the firm behind the Falcon, has fathered—SpaceX has launched and recovered its rockets 250 times—stands in stark contrast with the unhinged, error-prone remarks that in recent weeks have made him sound like a petulant space cadet. These included: appearing to endorse an antisemitic tweet on X, his social-media platform (an act he later called “foolish”); a cringeworthy trip to Israel that he said was to promote peace but looked more like an apology tour; a barrage of “Go fuck yourself”s to advertisers such as Disney at a New York Times summit, after they pulled their ads from X; and crass self-mythologising like his comment that he has “done more for the environment than any single human on Earth”.

One attendee at the rocket launch sighed that Mr Musk, for all his genius, now reminded him of the messed-up Tony Soprano, from the mobster TV series. But another, a young British physics buff, put his finger on why the entrepreneur still enjoyed a cult following. “He’s clearly a very troubled man. But being strong and turning a troubled past into a successful future is attractive. He’s a mega-leader. He has to make people believe he can walk on water.”

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If You Think Downsizing Might Save Your Company, Think Again - Harvard Business Review

Firms often downsize because it is seen as a way to reduce costs, adjust structures, and create leaner, more efficient workplaces. But new research indicates that downsizing may actually increase the likelihood of bankruptcy. The research team examined 2010 data from 4,710 publicly traded firms and determined whether they declared bankruptcy in the subsequent 5-year period. After controlling for known potential drivers of both downsizing and bankruptcy, as well as numerous other factors, they found that downsizing firms were twice as likely to declare bankruptcy as firms that did not downsize.

During the Great Recession of 2008, companies around the world downsized their workforces. American firms alone laid off more than 8 million workers from the end of 2008 to the middle of 2010. Even in healthier financial times, such as now, firms often downsize because it is seen as a way to reduce costs, adjust structures, and create leaner, more efficient workplaces. Despite the prevalence of downsizing, researchers and businesspeople alike continue to disagree on the viability of this common organizational practice. We add to this debate with our new research, which indicates that downsizing may actually increase the likelihood of bankruptcy.

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If Social Security benefits were cut, here's how much more you'd need to save for retirement - CNBC

Social Security is essential to older Americans' financial security, yet there always seems to be a new headline about how the benefits are at risk.

Douglas Boneparth, a certified financial planner and president and founder ofBone Fide Wealth in New York, said clients ask him how they can prepare for their retirement if Social Security benefits are slashed â or even eliminated.

"We work with a relatively young clientele, and they aren't too confident today's system will be the one they inherit when they retire" Boneparth said. "They want to hedge their bets."

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