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Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

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Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#151

Post by deepnotderp »

pmarreck wrote: post #150

This was apparently a plot point in Billions. There's market opportunity here. Off the top of my head: 1) Drone photos instead of satellite photos to get at the data cheaper 2) ML counting of cars 3) Some way to legally sense the number of cellphones within a given radius (can possibly be combined with a drone) 4) Simply aiming a network cam at the entrance/exit from across the street and counting the number of peopl…

So all of that already exists and is already widely used. I'm a bit confused as to why this is news considering that this has been going on for quite some time.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#152

Post by alphagrep12345 »

totaldude87 wrote: post #148

I think i saw the same thing in the showtime series "Billions"? where Taylor uses this information , thought this is another level of technical analysis :) Moral ethics aside, this looks legal?!, even if the shorts tank shares based on images of car parking lots..

In Billions, Bobby shrugs off saying - everyone does that, tell me something new. So I thought this is already pretty popular.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#153

Post by ThrustVectoring »

mochomocha wrote: post #99
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some information has material amounts of actual dollar value. Whoever knows that your employer has an acquisition in the works that will be announced tomorrow has an extraordinarily easy way to monetize that. This information rightfully belongs to your employer, who is keeping it under wraps for financially important business reasons. Sharing it or acting on it means enriching yourself at the expense of those busines…

I know that. I'm asking specifically about the semantics of "theft" vs "fairness" here. I don't think the word "theft" makes much sense in this context.

It's theft in the same way that copying the address and secret key of a bitcoin wallet is theft.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#154

Post by jrochkind1 »

pmarreck wrote: post #150

This was apparently a plot point in Billions. There's market opportunity here. Off the top of my head: 1) Drone photos instead of satellite photos to get at the data cheaper 2) ML counting of cars 3) Some way to legally sense the number of cellphones within a given radius (can possibly be combined with a drone) 4) Simply aiming a network cam at the entrance/exit from across the street and counting the number of peopl…

Why would drones be cheaper than satellite photos? If they were, wouldn't the hedge funds already be doing that instead? They clearly seem not to me.

The issue, if there is one, is that it is not cheap to get this data on a large enough scale to be useful.

I suppose it's possible a sampling of just a few parking lots would be representative enough to be useful? In which case you don't need drones, you can just go to the parking lots. Which is apparently what Sam Walton did? I dunno. If that were good enough, again I'm not sure why the hedge funds would be paying for sattelite photos instead.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#156

Post by bluGill »

65934 wrote: post #41
bluGill wrote: post #23

Nothing 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…

Where did you get this anecdote from? Googled it, couldn't find anything

His Book "One up on Wall Street". (which others have mentioned.)

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#157

Post by est31 »

Hedge funds do a ton of crazy research like this. I remember reading about hedge funds buying new cars only to sell them immediately after. They were only interested in their serial numbers which they used to estimate the count of sold cars of a specific model using the german tanks method. Before the sales numbers are out, information like this is very valuable.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#158

Post by logifail »

ISL wrote: post #25

As 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 ben…

> As 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.

What about companies that find out about your retail trade before it's even executed, and are able to act on that information to profit from your very intent to trade?

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#159

Post by eeZah7Ux »

ISL wrote: post #25

As 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 ben…

> it doesn't bother me at all that other market participants are trying to be better informed

You should stop trading now.

Re: Hedge funds use satellite images to beat Wall Street

#160

Post by tryptophan »

logifail wrote: post #158
ISL wrote: post #25

As 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 ben…

> As 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. What about companies that find out about your retail trade before it's even executed , and are able to act on that information to profit from your very intent to trade?

This is called front running and is super illegal.
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