Honey, I Insider-Traded Your Merger
Also anti-Ackman activism, private credit, private IPOs, conversion taxation and Byju vs. Byju’s.
Look, if your spouse works as a mergers and acquisitions manager at a big public company, and her company acquires another public company, and you “methodically sold all [your] positions in both [your] individual brokerage account and [your] Roth IRA (totaling approximately $2.16 million)” to buy shares of the target stock before the deal was announced, and then you sell the target stock when the deal is announced and make a profit of $1.76 million: That is insider trading and you will get arrested. I don’t need to know any more facts. Your spouse worked on the deal, you sold everything you owned to buy the target stock, the regulators can very easily put those two facts together, and when they ask you what happened and you are like “crazy coincidence right?” they will absolutely not believe you, nor should they. Bad, bad, bad look.
No, the only question is: Will your spouse get arrested? Because there are two possibilities here: