I remember reading years ago about similar data being used to monitor and track the recession (in the US) and potential recovery from.
Especially as it related to big-box retailers.
Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
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Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#22Reminds me of this article from Thasos Group that analysed smart phone signals at a Tesla factory to infer overtime work: http://thasosgroup.com/blog/thasos-data-tesla-wsj/
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#23Nothing new here other than satellites. Years ago (1990s?) Peter Lynch - at the time manager of the largest mutual fund followed his daughters into a shopping mall for back to school - his daughters didn't go into GAP stores so he went back to the office and sold as his shared of GAP. His fund beat everyone else by a large margin because GAP stocks dropped a month latter when they announced the earnings drop.
This is better of course, but nothing you can't do in some other way with a little work.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#24I find it somewhat interesting to what lengths traders go for profits. Cue people who explain how this makes the markets more efficient. Something I'm wondering about though: The article makes it sound like this is some new unfair advantage of the big traders. But isn't this an old game? If you can afford to acquire and process the data you're likely going to beat the other participants. That was always true. I don't…
It increases the information that makes its way into the markets and makes it more likely that the price reflects the what's happening in the real world.
A world in which nobody bothered to check whether a company was actually producing anything would turn the stock market into a collective guessing game.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#25As an occasional retail trader, it doesn't bother me at all that other market participants are trying to be better informed. In fact, it means that market prices are more likely to be properly-priced.
We should not aspire to drag hedge-fund research down to the Main Street level. If there is a place for government in this context, it is to fund the education necessary to help retail investors learn a) how to take beneficial approaches to investing and risk, b) to appreciate the realities of trading against professional investors, and c) to understand how to conceive, test, and implement their own hypotheses in the real world.
In general, an informed market is a healthy one.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#26The tone of the article seems like it has an axe to grind. Is it really that much of a surprise that very well capitalised investors have significant advantages of "main street" investors?
That's always been the argument for index funds for regular investors, you're never going to compete with hedge funds, why waste your time?
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#27I went to a recruiting talk by Two Sigma a while back where they discussed the same thing as an example of "look at this cool stuff we get to work on". They had slides with satellite images of some parking lot and showed how they could segment cars, deal with car-like things on roofs, map regions of parking lots to the right stores, handle different conditions like snow, etc. From a technical perspective it's actuall…
How do they deal with underground parking in urban areas especially?
You wouldn’t. But just because a prediction can’t be 100% accurate because of missing data doesn’t mean that the prediction isn’t useful.
Really, what they are likely comparing is the relative changes in parking lot occupancy over time. So it’s not necessary to have complete coverage of all parking lots. You just need enough coverage to make the prediction with a certain level of confidence.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#28I find it somewhat interesting to what lengths traders go for profits. Cue people who explain how this makes the markets more efficient. Something I'm wondering about though: The article makes it sound like this is some new unfair advantage of the big traders. But isn't this an old game? If you can afford to acquire and process the data you're likely going to beat the other participants. That was always true. I don't…
It increases the information that makes its way into the markets and makes it more likely that the price reflects the what's happening in the real world. A world in which nobody bothered to check whether a company was actually producing anything would turn the stock market into a collective guessing game.
>A world in which nobody bothered to check whether a company was actually producing anything would turn the stock market into a collective guessing game.
This is kind of a thing in China.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#29This article is very wrong to confuse "material non-public information" with hard to acquire information like counting cars in satellite photos. Remember the Matt Levine test: insider trading is about theft, not fairness. When a company insider uses private company information to trade (or colludes with an outside party to do so) they are stealing material non-public information from the company for their own benefit…
This is exactly right. If you're upset about this then you should be upset that hedge funds can afford to hire smarter analysts than you, which is just silly.
Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street
#30Honestly, I'm not particularly impressed. There are a lot of other trading edges that could be found for a lot less hassle and money, but I guess that's also the beautiful thing about the market - more ways to skin a cat than anyone can imagine, and it's also not a zero sum game.