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Comment by sudovancity | Hacker News Reader

"While employees of companies are barred from buying or selling stocks based on information that has not yet been made public, lawyers told the Journal that they were unaware of any such ban affecting real estate transactions."

This is exactly what I was wondering, I know there are rules against insider trading, but I wasn't sure if there were rules against people buying property based on a potential location for a new HQ.

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There aren't. Matt Levine had an article about it recently, oddly enough on HQ2

The crime of "insider trading" is a type of securities fraud. A plain reading of the law would not seem to apply to purchasing a home. But historically securities fraud has been used to prosecute a wide array of behavior

I would be surprised if purchasing a mine for some particular mineral immediately after learning that your tech company will suddenly need an enormous amount of that mineral in a closed door meeting, didn't constitute some sort of insider trading.

Similarly, if advanced real estate purposes were made with the intent of resale I'd imagine you'd also get hit with insider trading. I think it'd be pretty reasonable to prosecute them anyways since they are using insider knowledge of market movements to gain an edge in the real estate market.

That’s a very broad and speculative reading. Insider trading is about regulating the securities market, not about keeping all transactions by the insider information-balanced.

Or as Matt Levine says - it is about theft (ie trading on stolen information) not about fairness

> I would be surprised if purchasing a mine for some particular mineral immediately after learning that your tech company will suddenly need an enormous amount of that mineral in a closed door meeting, didn't constitute some sort of insider trading.

Then prepare to be surprised

> Similarly, if advanced real estate purposes were made with the intent of resale I'd imagine you'd also get hit with insider trading

You'd imagine wrong

> I think it'd be pretty reasonable to prosecute them anyways since they are using insider knowledge of market movements to gain an edge in the real estate market.

That's not what insider trading is in the eyes of the law.

Insider trading applies strictly to securities. Commodities markets have laws against front-running. But that's about it.

If you take information that your company is going to suddenly need a new metal and you go buy all the mines then about all your company can do is fire you.

They may be able to sue you depending on your employment contract.

For a historical example I’m pretty sure Disney did this with purchasing land in Orlando before they announced they would build Disney World there. They even used fake names. Given in that case the company itself was doing the purchasing in secret so that seems a bit less shady.

Real estate as a whole needs newer and much stronger restrictions. It's an inarguable fact that it's a "housing market" and speculative investment tends to be bad for everyone.

"I would be surprised if purchasing a mine for some particular mineral immediately after learning that your tech company will suddenly need an enormous amount of that mineral in a closed door meeting, didn't constitute some sort of insider trading."

I do mining. It's not illegal by any means. How else would a company obtain the resources they need if not for looking for them, either in the earth or in the marketplace?

Hey lightedman, just wanted to make sure you know you are shadowbanned and have been for years. I can see your comments because I have "showdead" turned on but most people can't.

Do you have any examples of such cases? I'd love to read the law on this.

Matt Levine has some entertaining articles on insider trading allegations

There was a great article from yesterday on securities fraud: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498796

I was looking for specific case law that could be used to argue that the behavior in question is unlawful, as the GP implied but did not support with facts or law.

The article you cite does not provide references to such law either; in fact, it neither has the word "fraud" nor "insider" in it. This article was about bribery, particularly of foreign officials; and the prosecutions attempted by the SEC led to consent decrees, not new securities laws. (The FCPA, however, eventually did get passed by Congress to outlaw the practice; but that is not a securities law.)

In fact, the article itself states:

> Proxmire believed that although the SEC had done all it could under the disclosure program, what was really needed was a law specifically prohibiting foreign bribery. The existing laws were not sufficient, as they addressed only the means through which a bribe might be paid, but not the act of paying a bribe itself.

So it's unfortunately not very helpful.

In the early days of the USA, "land speculation was scandal bordering on crime and sometimes considered treason (since the USA borders were expanding, so getting involved in not-yet-USA land was competiting with government plans).

Amazon’s employment NDA surely prohibits employees from using company confidential information outside work, for example as a side business doing real estate investing

You are expected to USE confidential info. I don't think this counts as DISCLOSING confidential info.

Personal use is disallowed. From Amazon employee NDA[1], section 3.1:

"Employee will hold all Confidential Information in strictest confidence and will not acquire, USE, publish, disclose, or communicate any Confidential Information except as required in connection with Employee’s work"

Capitalization of USE mine otherwise verbatim.

[1] https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3543196/A...

If you know you're going to be going to NYC, how is this not "in connection with Employee's work"?

If the location of HQ2 hasn’t even been announced internally at Amazon, I don’t think any employee would know for sure they are relocating there.

Even if you were on the team who decided that on NYC and were charged to make it happen? I don't find it unreasonable to think that some key members of the team were set to relocate in and around the time the announcement came to pass. There is not enough information here to say if this is for speculation in real estate or personal use.

Heck at the rate of turnover and the job market they just could be a few employees leaving Amazon for a new position in NYC.

Maybe, but at the same time I would assume Amazon offers relief assistance? I needed my companies sign off before I could even start looking for a house.

My company requires employees to sign a document that they won’t use confidential company info for personal gain.

If we go down that rabbit hole, are you allowed to perform well in your job using confidential information in order to gain a promotion?

The actual language specifies personal gain outside of work.

That said, I don’t think they have any mechanism to enforce it.

"We're going to ask you to move to New York, but don't use that to personally gain housing"?

The question is whether they bought that housing for themselves because they're being moved or if they bought it to resell at a profit because they had internal knowledge of this neighbourhood being used for HQ2.

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