Ackman's 300% Israel Trade
Bill Ackman bought 4.99% of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange for $25 million during the war. Twenty-two months later, the stake is worth roughly $98 million — and TASE has doubled every developed market on the planet.
Wall Street called it crazy. The numbers called it right.
January 2024. One hundred and ten days into the war. Israel's credit rating under pressure. Foreign venture capital pulling back. Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman wrote a $25 million check for 4.99% of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Twenty-two months later, that stake is worth roughly $98 million.
A return of nearly 300%. About $73 million in gains. Ackman called it “probably the best investment I’ve ever made” when he rang the opening bell in Tel Aviv in September 2025. He has said he and Oxman will never sell.
The numbers
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange did not just rebound. It outran every developed market on the planet.
| Index | Window | Return |
|---|---|---|
| TA-35 | 2025 | +51.6% |
| TA-35 | Since October 7, 2023 | ~+100% |
| TA-90 | 2025 | +46.6% |
| TA-90 | Since the war | +93% |
| TA-125 | 2025 | +51% |
| S&P 500 | 2025 | +18% |
| Nasdaq-100 | 2025 | +22% |
| FTSE 100 | 2025 | +25% |
Israel's blue chips doubled the developed-market field. Foreign capital noticed. Foreign investors bought roughly NIS 4.3 billion of Israeli shares in 2025 — concentrated in financials and defense, the two sectors Wall Street had written off the hardest. The shekel appreciated roughly 20% during the rally. Ten-year Israeli government bond yields fell from 4.48% to 3.91%.
The exit machine
The public market was the smaller story. The private market was the bigger one.
Israeli tech exits totaled $74.3 billion across 150 transactions in 2025 — a record. Google bought Wiz for $32 billion, the largest Israeli technology acquisition in history. Palo Alto Networks bought CyberArk for $25 billion, the second largest. Strip both deals out and Israeli M&A still grew 12% year over year.
Israeli startups raised $15.6 billion across the year. Navan went public at $6.2 billion, eToro at $4.4 billion, Via on the same wave. Aryt Industries — a defense-fuse manufacturer few outside Israel had heard of — returned 408% in 2025 and 2,212% since the war began. The stock is up more than twenty-three-fold.
What Ackman saw
Ackman was not writing a charitable check. He was buying a royalty on Israeli Innovation.
“Owning an exchange is like owning a royalty on the success of a country,” he said at the TASE bell ceremony. The thesis was straightforward. If Israel compounds, the exchange compounds. If Israeli companies list, trade, and grow, the platform collects on every transaction.
He bought 4.99% — precisely under the 5% threshold that triggers regulatory review. He spent 45 minutes with TASE CEO Itai Ben-Zeev before writing the check. He used personal capital because the deal was too small for Pershing Square’s billion-dollar mandate.
He has now committed another $1 billion to Israeli companies.
The lesson for the next billion
If a 292% return is what showed up for the one billionaire who arrived during the war, what shows up for the capital arriving now?
The data answers. Israeli tech exits in 2025 totaled roughly 14% of the country's GDP in a single year. Cyber alone drew 38% of all private funding in the third quarter. Healthcare logged a record 152 funding rounds. Defense-tech is now a public-market category, not a category in waiting.
Ackman bought the index of Israeli Innovation at maximum fear and got paid like a founder. The trade is no longer contrarian. It is the consensus the rest of the global allocator base has not yet repriced.
That is the gap. That is the opportunity.
