True, but as you can see from SEC's stance of pump and dump schemes on altcoins, there are ways of blurring the lines of legality.

I'm not an expert at this! But it would seem a fairly straightforward way to profit without directly trafficking in securities linked to either purchaser or acquirer would be to instead use related company securities instead.

Ex: rumor is Amazon will buy Target. Buy securities on a basket of retail, ex-Target, with similarities to Target.

Yeah, IANAL, but that sounds like a textbook pump-and-dump.

This is exactly what Jim Cramer did