Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Make the Predictions Come True

New prediction market manipulation

In theory, a thing that you could do is:

1. Buy some short-dated out-of-the-money call options on a public company.
2. Call up a deals reporter at a prominent news outlet and say “hey I hear Amalgamated Amalgamators is going to acquire Consolidated Widgets at $50 per share, you should publish that, it’s a big scoop, you will get a lot of clicks and keep your readers informed and win various journalism prizes.”
3. The reporter is like “thanks I’ll look into it.”
4. Time passes and the reporter does not publish the story you want.
5. So you call her back ...