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J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

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Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#12

There is a lot of this going on in Prague. There is even an entire specialty called geoinformatics that you can study. I have an aquantance who's first comercial project was to tell the city which street lights are out. This really goes to show, however, how the everyday man has no hope, as an investor, against the big boys. Edit: I origionally wanted to link to this startup https://spaceknow.com/ but couldn't rememb…

The everyday man should not be investing in individual stocks like this. They should be parking their money in low cost indexes[1].

[1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/4049862-investment-advice-wa...

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#13
post #3

I wonder what it costs to get these images, and if you could get them more cheaply by flying drones? I guess that would require a presence in a lot of places though. . . . Still, maybe you could focus on just a few cities, and get pictures more frequently than you'd get with satellites? Maybe there is an opportunity there.

Note that to acquire imagery you don't necessarily need to request a new one be shot. Historical imagery often covers what you need, depending on what part of the globe you want to see, and when.

Each image with sample distance to differentiate cars seems to be $10-$48 each.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#15

There is a lot of this going on in Prague. There is even an entire specialty called geoinformatics that you can study. I have an aquantance who's first comercial project was to tell the city which street lights are out. This really goes to show, however, how the everyday man has no hope, as an investor, against the big boys. Edit: I origionally wanted to link to this startup https://spaceknow.com/ but couldn't rememb…

The everyday man should not be investing in individual stocks like this. They should be parking their money in low cost indexes[1]. [1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/4049862-investment-advice-wa...

Index funds seem to be emerging as a new religion on the comment sections of the internet. As religions go it's reasonably harmless, but the faith that some folks have in index funds vs sensibly diversified portfolios of decent self-selected stocks is disarming.

A reasonably chosen self-selected buy-and-hold portfolio will, on average, perform just about as well as an index fund. Psychologically it can be better or worse depending on your personality because you get/have to take responsibility for your profit/loss.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#16
post #3

I wonder what it costs to get these images, and if you could get them more cheaply by flying drones? I guess that would require a presence in a lot of places though. . . . Still, maybe you could focus on just a few cities, and get pictures more frequently than you'd get with satellites? Maybe there is an opportunity there.

By the time you've paid for a drone and someone to fly it in each city, you might as well just pay someone minimum wage to drive around photographing the lots from ground level. It'd probably work out cheaper.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#17
post #3

I wonder what it costs to get these images, and if you could get them more cheaply by flying drones? I guess that would require a presence in a lot of places though. . . . Still, maybe you could focus on just a few cities, and get pictures more frequently than you'd get with satellites? Maybe there is an opportunity there.

Rather than drones use large blimps, like google was planning to do with project loon.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#18
Oh no, not another graph with misleading axes. It doesn't really show such a perfect fit as it looks like. They've both scaled and translated the axes to make the two curves look similar to each other. If they counted cars upwards from 0 instead of downwards from the previous amount, then it'd make more sense but then we would see if the slopes were different or there was an offset indicating, for example, that cars are expected to still remain after the stock price reaches 0.

Good on them for starting the stock price axis at 0, that's a rarity in stock-price graphs.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#19
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The everyday man should not be investing in individual stocks like this. They should be parking their money in low cost indexes[1]. [1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/4049862-investment-advice-wa...

Index funds seem to be emerging as a new religion on the comment sections of the internet. As religions go it's reasonably harmless, but the faith that some folks have in index funds vs sensibly diversified portfolios of decent self-selected stocks is disarming. A reasonably chosen self-selected buy-and-hold portfolio will, on average, perform just about as well as an index fund. Psychologically it can be better or w…

> on average

I think the goal of an index fund is to normalize results, so that you don't happen to be the guy who ends up significantly below average.

Re: J.C. Penney’s troubles are reflected in satellite images of its parking lots

#20
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Index funds seem to be emerging as a new religion on the comment sections of the internet. As religions go it's reasonably harmless, but the faith that some folks have in index funds vs sensibly diversified portfolios of decent self-selected stocks is disarming. A reasonably chosen self-selected buy-and-hold portfolio will, on average, perform just about as well as an index fund. Psychologically it can be better or w…

> on average I think the goal of an index fund is to normalize results, so that you don't happen to be the guy who ends up significantly below average.

But that means you're not going to end up significantly above average either. Whether that makes sense really depends on your financial situation and tolerance for risk than any hard and fast rule.
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