Israel Matzav

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

If you didn't invest in Israel, you should have

I have an old friend who used to do institutional trading in New York via online access from Israel back in the '90's. The joke in that office used to be that someone would ask "What's going on with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange?" and someone (usually my friend) would answer "Who cares?" Well, not anymore.

For the past ten years, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has produced the best risk-adjusted returns (that means that if you take more risk, you should get more return) of any stock exchange in the developed world. Really. And I remember when we were considered an emerging market.

The Bloomberg Riskless Return Ranking shows the Tel Aviv TA-25 Index (TA-25) returned 7.6 percent in the 10 years ended February 17, after adjusting for volatility, the highest among 24 developed- nation benchmark indexes. Israel beat Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI), the next-best market with a risk-adjusted gain of 6.7%, and Norway, which had the highest total return.

Israel outperformed as it fought a month-long battle against Hezbollah in 2006, was involved in a similar conflict with Hamas two years later and is now threatened by Iran’s nuclear program. International investors including Warren Buffett bought local companies and the economy, steered by Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, grew more than twice as fast as the US last year. Israel’s stocks may extend gains as Apple Inc. and IBM acquire the country’s technology startups.

“Israel is an exciting place to invest,” Michael Steinhardt, the former hedge fund manager who produced returns averaging 24% a year over almost three decades until he retired in 1995, said in a telephone interview from Fisher Island, Florida. “The country is surrounded by enemies, it’s always on the edge of extinction, but it expands and prospers.”

...

The Israeli gauge returned 161% including dividends over the last decade, the third-best performance among developed markets after Norway’s OBX Index and the Hang Seng.

“This is a great achievement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response to the article in the Knesset yesterday.

Read the whole thing. And if you want to acquire a company here, I know a good lawyer :-)

Labels: Israeli high tech, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange

Monday, January 16, 2012

El Al and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange websites hacked

The websites of El Al Israel Airlines, our national carrier, and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, were hacked on Monday morning - apparently by a Saudi hacker who exposed credit card numbers last week. Israel Radio is reporting that the Stock Exchange site is not down, but is operating quite slowly, but that El Al's site is still down as of 1:00 pm.

The prominent hacker 0xOmar, who has been at the forefront of an Internet assault on Israel, and who released tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers last month, sent an email to The Jerusalem Post before the attack.

He said he had been joined by a hacking team called "Nightmare." The new group "promised to take down" the two websites by morning, he added.

El Al released a statement saying it was aware that "a cyber war has been waged against the State of Israel for two weeks. El Al is closely monitoring the activities of the Saudi hacker [0xOmar]." El Al said steps being taken to fortify its official website "could cause disruptions to the website's activities." Both websites supply key information to members of the public, and their attack represents an escalation in the web war being waged against Israel.

Thus far, the only response from Israel has been in kind.

Pro-Israeli hacker Hannibal, who claims that he is a “Jew who lives somewhere in the world,” published early Monday the Facebook account details of some 20,000 Arab users. He also claimed to possess information that can be used to breach the bank accounts of some 10 million people in Iran and Saudi Arabia, vowing to cause billions of dollars in damage.

Ynet looked into Hannibal’s claims and confirmed that the details he published indeed allow for the unauthorized use of Facebook accounts.

...

A hacker known as Yoni who presented himself as the leader of a group of Israeli hackers wrote on Ynet that “we do not operate against any certain nationality, and any person who operates against the group’s principles, regardless of religion, creed or gender, will be harmed. We, as a group, regret the harm done to innocents and aim to avoid it as much as is possible, yet in this war it’s a necessary move and we have no choice but to do it.”

Aren't we supposed to have the best internet security in the world?

Labels: El Al, internet problems, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange