WSJ What’s News - One Year After Oct. 7, Israel Prepares for Years of War

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

P.M. Edition for Oct. 7. The Wall Street Journal’s deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and North Africa Shayndi Raice discusses how the Hamas attacks changed Israel’s security strategy. And as it recovers from Hurricane Helene, Florida braces for Category 5 storm Milton. Plus, corporate insiders haven’t been buying their own stocks. WSJ reporter Karen Langley explains what that might mean for other investors. Tracie Hunte hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, offering the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes. CME Group, where risk meets opportunity. Florida, still recovering from Hurricane Helene, braces for category 5 Milton. And one year since the October 7 attacks, Israel sees a future at war. What the Israeli establishment has sort of realized or come to believe is that these 20 years of trying so desperately to have normalcy have allowed all their enemies to flourish and to create this ring of fire around them. Plus, corporate insiders are selling stocks in their own companies instead of buying them.

Should we be worried? It's Monday, October 7th. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. This is a PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Hurricane Milton rapidly intensified into a Category 5 storm today, threatening to bring additional storm surge and flooding later this week to a battered Florida still recovering from Hurricane Helene. The National Hurricane Center said the storm, which had winds estimated at about 160 mph, is forecast to make landfall on Florida's west coast as early as Wednesday.

It's too early to know Milton's precise path, but forecasters said the storm's core could make landfall anywhere from north of Tampa Bay through the Tampa-St. Petersburg region and down to Sarasota, Port Charlotte, and Fort Myers. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 51 counties and encouraged residents on the west coast of the state to begin preparations for evacuation.

The governor also said Florida officials made a pre-landfall emergency declaration request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In a look to U.S. markets, major indexes slipped to start the week, reversing course after a blockbuster jobs report sent stocks higher on Friday. The S&P 500 and the Dow closed down about 1 percent, while the Nasdaq was down about 1.2 percent. Despite today's drop, overall U.S. markets have been rallying. The S&P 500 has raised higher, notching its best first nine months of the year since 1997. Stock investors could hardly be more enthusiastic.

And yet, some of the best-informed investors don't seem to share the optimism. According to InsiderSentiment.com, corporate insiders have been reluctant to snap up shares of their companies. Of all U.S. companies with a transaction by an officer or director in July, only 15.7% reported net buying of companies' shares. That's the lowest level in the past 10 years. Joining us now to explain what all this could mean is Karen Langley, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Karen, you note in your article how people like Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg of Metta,

two leaders of big tech companies, are selling shares in their companies instead of buying them. What's behind this? For any individual investor, we don't really know, and I will say that some investors who track insider sentiment actually think that selling isn't a great indicator for the future of the market because individuals can sell stocks for any number of reasons. However, there are investors who think that it's significant whenever somebody decides to trade their shares. And the billions of dollars worth of sales that we've seen from Jeff Bezos and Mark

Zuckerberg certainly are eye-catching examples. So that is sending a caution sign to people who follow this sort of data. How useful of an indicator is insider trading to investors? What it could be a strong indicator of is the future trajectory of the stock market. The stock market is always trying to look ahead months down the line for what might be happening in the economy and how that's going to affect the profits of companies. But a professor I spoke with at the University of Michigan who studies insider transactions told me that insider trading

is a very strong predictor of aggregate future stock returns. He did note that it's not like the one and only indicator that an investor should look at, but it's something that investors might want to pay attention to along with, for example, data about the health of the economy or the outlook for corporate earnings. Karen Langley is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Coming up, one year after the October 7 attacks, does Israel face a future at war? That's after the break. The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th last year ended 20 years of relative peace, expanding wealth, and growing diplomatic ties. Now, one year later, Israel is firmly on the

counterattack and preparing to be at war for years. Previously, the military aimed to provide long stretches of peace that were only momentarily punctured by short conflicts with Palestinian militants. But Israel's attacks in recent weeks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen mark an aggressive shift in Israel's security posture. Joining us now from Israel where she's based is Shandi Reis, The Wall Street Journal's deputy bureau chief for the Middle East and North Africa. Shandi, why did Israel change its strategy?

As you mentioned before, the last two decades primarily have really seen tremendous growth and wealth in Israel. It's especially technology sector has become kind of only second to Silicon Valley in the United States. And it has sort of catapulted Israel onto, you know, the world stage in terms of an economic powerhouse and, you know, being relevant. And so that's really helped it expand its diplomatic ties, especially with Arab countries in the Middle East. October 7th really shattered all of that. What the Israeli establishment has sort of realized or come to believe is that these 20 years

of trying so desperately to have normalcy have allowed all their enemies to flourish and to create this ring of fire around them. And so the belief now is that they can't do that again. There has to be a significant shift and they have to try to sort of nip these threats in the bud a lot earlier. As you said, Israel turned into an economic powerhouse, but is its economy

strong enough to support a long war? The issue is what will people have to give up in the future. So the big debate here is really what percentage of GDP will have to go towards defense spending. And right now, Israel spends about 4.5% of its GDP on defense. You know, it could go 6, 7, 8, 10%. And that would put a big strain on the economy. Obviously, also being at war all the time puts a strain on an economy. Everybody here has to serve in the military, about three years of service. But in terms of like manpower, Israel relies on hundreds of thousands of reservists. And so if you have people who are in the military 200 days a year, which is what

many people have had to do this past year, they're obviously not at their jobs. They're not being productive. They're not making money. They're not contributing to the economy. So Israel has a potentially very rough few years ahead of them, especially when you put those years into comparison with sort of the previous decade or so. How is the Israeli public viewing the prospect

of a protracted war? Overall, people understand what needs to happen and people are very tired, but they're also very committed. They believe that what happened on October 7th can never happen again. But there is definitely a divide within Israel over whether, especially the war in Gaza, needs to end at least temporarily

to help bring the hostages who are still there home. I think the majority of the country is supportive of the idea that there has to be some sort of fundamental change in the security situation. Shandi Reis is the Wall Street Journal's Deputy Bureau Chief for the Middle East and North Africa. Thank you so much, Shandi. Thank you. Thank you so much, Shady. Thank you. In other news, another member of New York City Mayor Eric Adams' staff is resigning. Philip Banks III, the city's deputy mayor for public safety, resigned today following the mayor's indictment last month on bribery and wire fraud charges.

Banks did not immediately return a request for comment. Adams, a Democrat, is the first sitting mayor of New York City to be indicted. He has faced some calls to resign but said he would continue to run the city and fight the charges in court. Adams has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded today to Victor Ambrose and Gary Revkin for the discovery of microRNA, tiny molecules that help control how genes are expressed. Their findings unlock new areas of research into the roles these molecules play in human health.

Researchers are exploring microRNA treatments for cancer, hepatitis, and heart disease. And finally, can money buy happiness? Back in 2010, an academic paper seemed to have the answer, and it was not really. It popularized the idea that $75,000 was a magic threshold. Beyond that salary, people supposedly wouldn't get any happier, even if they made more and more money. But more recent data from a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School suggests that a 10% raise, no matter how much you're currently making, will boost satisfaction. WSJ personal finance reporter Joe Pinsker spoke to our Your Money Briefing podcast.

One interesting thing about this new research I wrote about is that it encourages us to think in percentages rather than dollars. So if you think about the effect that a $10,000 raise might have for someone, it's going to be probably a different impact in their life if they make $20,000 versus $200,000. But if you think in percentages rather than dollar terms, and instead of saying $10,000 raise, you just say a 10% raise, that proportional increase will probably lead to a similar size boost in happiness across income levels. And you can hear more about how more money may bring more happiness in today's Your Money

Briefing podcast. And that's what's the news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show was produced by PRBNMA with supervising producer Michael Kosmitis. I'm Tracy Hunt for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.