Matt Levine, Columnist

Front-Running Amazon With Buildings

Also lotteries, embarrassments, Tesla and ICOs.

October 22, 2018 at 3:32 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Real-estate speculation.

Imagine you are Jeff Bezos’s best friend, or his therapist, or his golf buddy. In the course of your many intimate confidential conversations, he lets slip that Amazon.com Inc. is about to announce an acquisition of a public company called XYZ Inc. If you go and buy shares of XYZ, you can make a quick easy profit when the acquisition is announced. But you won’t, because that is classic and obvious insider trading, and if you do it you’ll get caught and go to prison.