Did Bill Ackman Help Move the NIS? A Closer Look at a Currency Run Few Saw Coming

Here is a theory worth taking seriously, even if the official record will never write it down. The Israeli new shekel (NIS) has just staged one of the most powerful currency rallies in its modern history, and one of the loudest foreign believers in Israel planted his flag at almost exactly the moment the tide turned. Correlation is not causation. But when a marquee investor spends two years telling the world there has never been a better time to own Israel, and the price of owning Israel then goes straight up, it is fair to ask how much of that move was confidence, and whose confidence it was.

The Currency Run Few Saw Coming

Rewind to the depths. On October 4, 2023, the shekel had already slipped to roughly 3.85 per US dollar, a 7.5-year low. After the October 7 attack the selling accelerated, and on October 27, 2023 the shekel bottomed at 4.08 per dollar, its weakest in 11 years, per the Times of Israel. Almost nobody, at that moment of maximum fear, was forecasting what came next.

What came next was a tear. After the June 2025 ceasefire that ended the Israel-Iran Twelve-Day War, the shekel strengthened roughly 4.5 percent against the dollar to its best level since end-2022, and it added about 2.0 percent in the third quarter of 2025, according to the Bank of Israel's Q3 2025 foreign exchange report. Over roughly a year USD/ILS fell about 18.83 percent, from 3.691 to 2.996, and around April 2026 the shekel pushed below 3.00 per dollar for the first time in about 31 years, as the Times of Israel documented. A currency does not move from an 11-year low to a 31-year high by accident.

Enter Bill Ackman

Bill Ackman is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, a registered investment adviser running roughly $19.8 billion in private-fund assets. He does not make quiet, diversified bets, and he does not stay quiet about the ones he makes. He builds concentrated, high-conviction positions and then argues for them in public, loudly, to an audience of millions.

So it mattered when he turned that machine toward Israel. According to a PR Newswire, Ackman and his wife Neri Oxman bought 4.99 percent of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange operator in early 2024, for roughly $25 million, and he did it, in his words, "in the midst of the war," declaring there was "no better time to invest in Israel" after October 7. He went on to ring the TASE opening bell, calling owning a piece of the exchange "like owning a royalty on the success of a country." Read the timeline plainly: he did not buy in after the recovery was obvious. He bought near the bottom, and then he spent the next two years telling everyone why they should too.

The Confidence Channel

Here is where I will argue past the official ledger. Currencies are not moved only by reserves and rate differentials. They are moved by the stories that capital tells itself about risk, and foreign capital is a herd that often needs a lead steer before it will move. A credible, relentless, globally followed bull can shift what an entire investor class believes is safe to own. In my view, Ackman was, at minimum, the most visible face of exactly that shift in sentiment toward Israeli assets, and quite possibly an early catalyst for it.

And his incentives and his advocacy point the same direction, which is the part I find most interesting. His TASE stake is denominated in shekels. A stronger shekel lifts the dollar value of that holding. So the man telling the world to buy Israel also stood to gain, in dollar terms, from precisely the currency strength that followed. None of that is improper. Talking your book in the open is what high-profile investors do every day. But it does mean his money and his megaphone were aligned, and when money and megaphone align behind a trade that then works spectacularly, a reasonable observer is allowed to wonder how much the megaphone mattered.

The Case Against My Own Theory

I will argue the other side too, because a theory you cannot attack is not worth printing. The honest counter-evidence is real. The Bank of Israel's own Q3 2025 report credits the rally to a falling risk premium after the Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon ceasefires, to heavy foreign inflows from tech and cyber exits like Wiz and CyberArk, to high interest-rate differentials, and to Israeli institutions hedging dollars back into shekels. Net foreign inflows reached roughly $39 billion in 2025 versus about $25 billion in 2024, per the same macro analysis. No central-bank report and no FX strategist names Ackman, and a $25 million equity stake is, on its own, far too small to push a free-floating currency that sits behind roughly $200 billion in reserves. If you want to believe the move was pure macro, the data lets you. I simply think sentiment was a larger ingredient than the macro-only story admits, and that the most quotable bull in the building is the obvious place to look for it.

The Test That Settles It

This is the part I am willing to be judged on. If the confidence premium is real, and if a marquee foreign bull has been a load-bearing part of it, then the cleanest tell will come when that bull steps away. So here is the falsifiable call: watch Ackman's TASE position. If he meaningfully trims or exits it, and the shekel softens in the months that follow, that sequence would suggest foreign conviction, not just central-bank mechanics, had been holding the line. If instead he exits and the shekel barely flinches, then the macro-only camp was right and I was wrong, in public, on the record. I am betting on the former. We will not have to wait long to find out.

The Bottom Line

The official story of the shekel's run is macro, and the official story is not wrong. But markets are also stories that people tell one another, and few people on earth tell a more persuasive market story than a billionaire who put $25 million and his reputation behind the trade at the moment of maximum fear. I think Ackman's fingerprints are on the confidence, even if they will never appear on the Bank of Israel's ledger. Did he move the NIS? Not with his $25 million. With his voice, maybe more than anyone wants to admit. Watch the exit.

Sources

• Haaretz: Israeli Shekel Sinks to 7-Year Low Against the U.S. Dollar (October 4, 2023)
• CNBC: Israel's Central Bank Sells $30 Billion in Foreign Reserves (October 9, 2023)
• Times of Israel: Bank of Israel Sold $8.2 Billion Since War Started to Protect Shekel
• Bank of Israel: Q3 2025 Foreign Exchange Report
• GlobalSource Partners: Shekel Strength Supported by Fundamentals but May Reflect Short-Term Overshooting
• Times of Israel: The $3.00 Squeeze, Why the Surging Shekel Is a Threat to Israel's Economy
• PR Newswire: Bill Ackman Rings the Opening Bell at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (September 2025)

This article is opinion and analysis, not financial advice and not a statement of fact about any individual's conduct. The interpretation and the prediction are the author's own. A stronger shekel and a TASE equity stake are matters of public record; any causal link between the two is the author's argument, not an established fact.