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Counting cars in parking lots turns out to be a good way to predict how well a big box retailer is doing--and trade their stock just before quarterly reports come out. Similarly for satellite photos of field crops and activity in other industries. Quartz has the story, https://qz.com/1652293/how-to-make-money-with-rs-metrics-and-orbital-insight-space-data/
Satellite speculators have reportedly used techniques like car-counting, tracking oil inventories or watching corn fields to make profitable forecasts of equity and commodity markets. Now, research from finance professors at UC Berkeley and the University of Kentucky provides the first independent evidence that these trading strategies work—and that they’re likely being used to the detriment of small-time investors.
The space datasets in question, created by firms RS Metrics and Orbital Insight, allow sophisticated investors to gain near-realtime understanding of same-store sales growth, an important metric for understanding the business of physical retailers like Walmart, Target or Costco. Investors can then make bets on or against companies just before they disclose quarterly financial results.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday July 06 2019, @09:24PM (3 children)
EVERYTHING is being used to the detriment of small-time investors. Small time investors are invited to the table just to fatten the pot for the big winners. At least it's better than not being invited to the table at all, as things were in the 1970s when banks would take your money and "invest it for you."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday July 07 2019, @05:02AM
If you're competing head to head on the market with a trader who heavily uses satellites to get information you'll never see, then you're doing it wrong.
And what would be the point of markets, if everyone was as ignorant as the small-time investor?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 07 2019, @07:44AM (1 child)
Welcome! But the house always wins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday July 07 2019, @03:49PM
It's better than that, as compared to keeping your money under your mattress, or (much the same) in a deposit account earning 0.5% APR, the market does - on average - pay out even for the small time investor, much better. But - the game has (always) been rigged to pay out bigger to the bigger investors - which is how you trend from a nice late 1950s middle-class majority to the oligarchs and peasants we are headed for.
🌻🌻 [google.com]