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I used to work for a hedge fund that bought data for 125 million americans a month, all of their mobile phone pings. All sorts of deep learning algorithms analy

I used to work for a hedge fund that bought data for 125 million americans a month, all of their mobile phone pings. All sorts of deep learning algorithms analyze shopping, warehouse, and other foot traffic. People have no idea the level of understanding some private investors have. It goes far beyond anything you see in public numbers. Some of the smartest people on the planet, teasing out wild facts about daily habits of americans. Every statistical algorithm known to man has been run on this data

sofixa 2y ago
> People have no idea the level of understanding some private investors have Is this to be able to analyse "the market" (how regular humans are consuming)?
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Enough so that the Federal Reserve was (and potentially still is) consuming this data. > Eric Swanson, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine, said that early in the pandemic, when things were changing quickly, the Fed looked at online rent prices, anonymized cellphone location data and credit card transaction data. https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03/20/the-fed-loves-a-data-buffet-whats-on-the-menu-these-days/ https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03/20/the-fed-loves-a-data-...
colinsane 2y ago
how far along are they into correlating different datasets and de-anonymizing? say i buy everything in cash: prepaid SIM, a cellphone without my name in the purchase history, not running anything i didn't compile from source (NixOS on a phone): do you figure my data's useless enough so as to not make it into these datasets? or they're accustomed to correlating so many data points that the cash-only route doesn't accomplish much anymore?
- mperham 2y ago
  They don't care about you or any one individual. They are collecting this data so they can buy/sell shares ahead of the public markets and quarterly reports. Same idea as using satellite photos to determine Walmart parking lot usage. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/08/19/129298095/with-satellite-images-wall-street-analysts-spy-on-wal-mart https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/08/19/129298095/with...

sofixa 2y ago

> People have no idea the level of understanding some private investors have Is this to be able to analyse "the market" (how regular humans are consuming)?

toomuchtodo 2y ago
Enough so that the Federal Reserve was (and potentially still is) consuming this data. > Eric Swanson, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine, said that early in the pandemic, when things were changing quickly, the Fed looked at online rent prices, anonymized cellphone location data and credit card transaction data. https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03/20/the-fed-loves-a-data-buffet-whats-on-the-menu-these-days/ https://www.marketplace.org/2024/03/20/the-fed-loves-a-data-...

colinsane 2y ago

how far along are they into correlating different datasets and de-anonymizing? say i buy everything in cash: prepaid SIM, a cellphone without my name in the purchase history, not running anything i didn't compile from source (NixOS on a phone): do you figure my data's useless enough so as to not make it into these datasets? or they're accustomed to correlating so many data points that the cash-only route doesn't accomplish much anymore?

mperham 2y ago
They don't care about you or any one individual. They are collecting this data so they can buy/sell shares ahead of the public markets and quarterly reports. Same idea as using satellite photos to determine Walmart parking lot usage. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/08/19/129298095/with-satellite-images-wall-street-analysts-spy-on-wal-mart https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/08/19/129298095/with...