8 ms·

Tailspotting: Identifying and profiting from CEO vacation trips

232 points by mathattack 12y ago

bagosm 12y ago
So a CEO that wants to see interest in their stock rise, should just take vacation more often. Win for everyone!
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Or schedule flights to their vacation homes using easily identified planes. They don't actually have to go with the plane. I imagine that a Stingray-like IMSI/IMEI/MEID interceptor that looked for executive mobile phones could be even more profitable.
SuperKlaus 12y ago
pdf for download here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2022822 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2022822
- aaronsnoswell 12y ago
  Thanks, their site has been down for hours.
- Flenser 12y ago
  viewable in browser (chrome at least) here: http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/293/ http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/293/
mlamat 12y ago
My first thought was: there obviously needs to be a reference to the 1987 movie "Wall Street" in there somewhere. "Due to their large size, aircraft can also be observed physically taking off and landing at airports by scouts stationed as “tailspotters,” a role played memorably by actor Charlie Sheen in the 1987 feature film Wall Street." Yep, I'm right.
nodetrend 12y ago
This is cool, although companies have probably become aware of this.
- neurobro 12y ago
  Possible, but it doesn't take many people trading on a signal to wipe out any correlation that may have been there.
- Aqwis 12y ago
  What can they do? Send their executives on random vacations and plane trips?
  - bengali3 12y ago
    you're close :) Use a charter aircraft that flys many different clients is one way to limit this, or offer their own aircraft available for charter when its not in use by the company. All corporate flight departments already do charter other aircraft for supplemental lift or when an aircraft is down for maintenance.
zhte415 12y ago
Paywalled. $39.95.
- drcoopster 12y ago
  scroll up for link to PDF
phil21 12y ago
This was what came to immediate mind after reading about ADS-B becoming mandatory in the US a few years back. This started a small few-month long obsession to understand it all, and became one of my more fun hobbies in the past few years. It already is mandatory in Europe. I didn't think of the vacationing correlation to stock prices, but simply tracking corporate movements and inferring future stock price movement from those movements. "Wall Street" of course coming to immediate mind here. For those not aware, ADS-B is essentially a transmitter in aircraft that periodically report registration number, altitude, GPS coordinates, and airspeed. This is to supplement the current air traffic control system, and eventually take it over. This data is in real time, and not delayed or censored like the FAA supplied data feeds are. It is not encrypted, so anyone with an antenna and the proper equipment can get the location information of every equipped aircraft within usually a 50-250mi radius, depending on antenna height, receiver quality, topology, etc. While many US domestic aircraft are not so equipped, this is rapidly changing as I believe all must be by 2022. Any aircraft that ever enters European airspace must be equipped, so that means for practical purposes any International flight can be tracked. This includes most corporate jets which are used to fly anywhere but within the United States. It's trivial to decode in software, and I run a couple installations with hacked up USB DBS TV dongles. They are not the highest quality (a few enterprising folks sell custom ASIC/boards for doing this better), but are cheap and easy to make work. It's a fun project to hack on for a weekend, I learned a bit about software defined radio among other things. Even fixed a bug in some code that accidentally calculated the aircraft's location to the wrong hemisphere :) Turns out GPS math is somewhat interesting, in the way they encode the data for the little bandwidth available. This is also the data that powers flightradar24, and probably some other sites out there. Basically a network of enthusiasts that run antenna installations reporting their data to a central server for visualization. I brought a small antenna and box on vacation with me to Jamaica a couple years back, and was able to track aircraft a good 300nm+ off the coast from the beach. It was fun watching the tracks route around storms and such.
- maaarghk 12y ago
  That sounds like great fun, I'd be really interested in a write-up of your project if you have the time. Particularly hacking the TV dongles, and working out the interesting GPS math!
pjc50 12y ago
You can use a similar technique for identifying international arms dealers, sanction busters, CIA rendition flights, etc. Alex Harrowell occasionally blogs about this: http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2011/01/09/a-quick-howto/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2011/01/09/a-quick-howto/ - aircraft investigation resources http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/07/23/o-rly/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/07/23/o-rly/ - Suspicious Iran-to-Syria flights http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2009/12/23/mystery-jet-update-malian-727/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2009/12/23/mystery-jet-upda... - mystery 727 in a desert
pserwylo 12y ago
One of the best pieces of advice I heard from our resident stats/machine learning researcher at Uni was this: If a paper is published which claims to show a technique for profiting on the share market, then it doesn't work. If it did, they wouldn't have published it. Having said that, there is plenty of interesting papers in this area, and from the abstract, this paper seems to take an interesting approach too.
- theintern 12y ago
  My first thought too. This must already be a variable in high frequency trading software for a number of years.
- jevgeni 12y ago
  I think it was Michael Lewis' "Liars Poker": "Those that tell don't know and those that know don't tell."
- chillingeffect 12y ago
  Hmmmmmm if I apply that to that researcher's own words, then he is lying to confuse you! It's a Goedelian paradox! Actually, I think the bigger point is that researcher's rarely "tell all." Just like Moriarty in the final episode of Season 2 of Sherlock (on BBC 2013-2014), sometimes a work is created as an advertisement demonstrating the ability to draw larger returns. Those intimate with the data will always have more than than will or can possibly publish.
- ganeumann 12y ago
  Interesting academic work on this recently. It shows that, as expected, the publication of a working investment strategy decreases its efficacy. http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=648576 http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=64857... Of course, contra your ML researcher, this presupposes that there are effective strategies that are published.
- mathattack 12y ago
  Some of it is about the agenda of the person writing it. The Fama-French 3 factor model still holds. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama%E2%80%93French_three-factor_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama%E2%80%93French_three-facto...) Part of this is because Gene Fama doesn't have a hedge fund on the side. He advises DFA, but they want their customers to understand the model. (He also won this year's Economics Nobel)
paulgb 12y ago
A similar technique was used to "predict" Sarah Palin's choice as running mate in 2008. > In 2008, as John McCain prepared to announce his running mate, Fitzpatrick and his fellow trader Joe Schilling were monitoring the movements of all the contenders, calling their press secretaries and checking a flight-tracking website. They noticed a Gulfstream jet from Anchorage, Alaska, bound for the site of a McCain rally, and bought Sarah Palin, a longshot. When the surprise pick was unveiled, Fitzpatrick took home $25,000. Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewrice/the-fall-of-intrade-and-the-business-of-betting-on-real-life http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewrice/the-fall-of-intrade-and-t... (despite being from buzzfeed, the article is well worth reading)
- rbanffy 12y ago
  In mid 2012 the company I was working for went through a lengthy acquisition process. I started monitoring our corporate calendar and meeting rooms in Exchange. One day I figured out our CTO was leaving the company: our head of HR, the CTO and all his managers were to be unavailable in a couple hours, for the same 30 minutes and, at the same time, one of the meeting rooms was booked. It was announced the next day. Right after the meeting, one of his managers had several new bookings extending through most of his day. We accurately predicted (with some surprise) the successor.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    Meta-use of a shared company calendar is worthy of a whole separate article, IMO. From personal experience - even if you can't see where your management is meeting or who they are meeting with, just knowing they will be out of the office can be valuable. Especially when you are job-hunting.
    - rev_bird 12y ago
      The only thing I've managed to use shared calendars for up to this point is figuring out when the meetings with leftover food were ending.
      - 12y ago
deathf 12y ago
Testing attention please.
andrewtbham 12y ago
Here is a video explaining the idea. http://vimeo.com/44382964 http://vimeo.com/44382964
yellowapple 12y ago
I'll take this to mean that we should just fire our CEO and not have to worry about problems ever again. ;)

232 points by mathattack 12y ago

bagosm 12y ago

So a CEO that wants to see interest in their stock rise, should just take vacation more often. Win for everyone!

logfromblammo 12y ago
Or schedule flights to their vacation homes using easily identified planes. They don't actually have to go with the plane. I imagine that a Stingray-like IMSI/IMEI/MEID interceptor that looked for executive mobile phones could be even more profitable.

SuperKlaus 12y ago

pdf for download here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2022822 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2022822

aaronsnoswell 12y ago
Thanks, their site has been down for hours.
Flenser 12y ago
viewable in browser (chrome at least) here: http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/293/ http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_lewp/293/

mlamat 12y ago

My first thought was: there obviously needs to be a reference to the 1987 movie "Wall Street" in there somewhere. "Due to their large size, aircraft can also be observed physically taking off and landing at airports by scouts stationed as “tailspotters,” a role played memorably by actor Charlie Sheen in the 1987 feature film Wall Street." Yep, I'm right.

nodetrend 12y ago

This is cool, although companies have probably become aware of this.

neurobro 12y ago
Possible, but it doesn't take many people trading on a signal to wipe out any correlation that may have been there.
Aqwis 12y ago
What can they do? Send their executives on random vacations and plane trips?
- bengali3 12y ago
  you're close :) Use a charter aircraft that flys many different clients is one way to limit this, or offer their own aircraft available for charter when its not in use by the company. All corporate flight departments already do charter other aircraft for supplemental lift or when an aircraft is down for maintenance.

zhte415 12y ago

Paywalled. $39.95.

drcoopster 12y ago
scroll up for link to PDF

phil21 12y ago

This was what came to immediate mind after reading about ADS-B becoming mandatory in the US a few years back. This started a small few-month long obsession to understand it all, and became one of my more fun hobbies in the past few years. It already is mandatory in Europe. I didn't think of the vacationing correlation to stock prices, but simply tracking corporate movements and inferring future stock price movement from those movements. "Wall Street" of course coming to immediate mind here. For those not aware, ADS-B is essentially a transmitter in aircraft that periodically report registration number, altitude, GPS coordinates, and airspeed. This is to supplement the current air traffic control system, and eventually take it over. This data is in real time, and not delayed or censored like the FAA supplied data feeds are. It is not encrypted, so anyone with an antenna and the proper equipment can get the location information of every equipped aircraft within usually a 50-250mi radius, depending on antenna height, receiver quality, topology, etc. While many US domestic aircraft are not so equipped, this is rapidly changing as I believe all must be by 2022. Any aircraft that ever enters European airspace must be equipped, so that means for practical purposes any International flight can be tracked. This includes most corporate jets which are used to fly anywhere but within the United States. It's trivial to decode in software, and I run a couple installations with hacked up USB DBS TV dongles. They are not the highest quality (a few enterprising folks sell custom ASIC/boards for doing this better), but are cheap and easy to make work. It's a fun project to hack on for a weekend, I learned a bit about software defined radio among other things. Even fixed a bug in some code that accidentally calculated the aircraft's location to the wrong hemisphere :) Turns out GPS math is somewhat interesting, in the way they encode the data for the little bandwidth available. This is also the data that powers flightradar24, and probably some other sites out there. Basically a network of enthusiasts that run antenna installations reporting their data to a central server for visualization. I brought a small antenna and box on vacation with me to Jamaica a couple years back, and was able to track aircraft a good 300nm+ off the coast from the beach. It was fun watching the tracks route around storms and such.

maaarghk 12y ago
That sounds like great fun, I'd be really interested in a write-up of your project if you have the time. Particularly hacking the TV dongles, and working out the interesting GPS math!

pjc50 12y ago

You can use a similar technique for identifying international arms dealers, sanction busters, CIA rendition flights, etc. Alex Harrowell occasionally blogs about this: http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2011/01/09/a-quick-howto/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2011/01/09/a-quick-howto/ - aircraft investigation resources http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/07/23/o-rly/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/07/23/o-rly/ - Suspicious Iran-to-Syria flights http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2009/12/23/mystery-jet-update-malian-727/ http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2009/12/23/mystery-jet-upda... - mystery 727 in a desert

pserwylo 12y ago

One of the best pieces of advice I heard from our resident stats/machine learning researcher at Uni was this: If a paper is published which claims to show a technique for profiting on the share market, then it doesn't work. If it did, they wouldn't have published it. Having said that, there is plenty of interesting papers in this area, and from the abstract, this paper seems to take an interesting approach too.

theintern 12y ago
My first thought too. This must already be a variable in high frequency trading software for a number of years.
jevgeni 12y ago
I think it was Michael Lewis' "Liars Poker": "Those that tell don't know and those that know don't tell."
chillingeffect 12y ago
Hmmmmmm if I apply that to that researcher's own words, then he is lying to confuse you! It's a Goedelian paradox! Actually, I think the bigger point is that researcher's rarely "tell all." Just like Moriarty in the final episode of Season 2 of Sherlock (on BBC 2013-2014), sometimes a work is created as an advertisement demonstrating the ability to draw larger returns. Those intimate with the data will always have more than than will or can possibly publish.
ganeumann 12y ago
Interesting academic work on this recently. It shows that, as expected, the publication of a working investment strategy decreases its efficacy. http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=648576 http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=64857... Of course, contra your ML researcher, this presupposes that there are effective strategies that are published.
mathattack 12y ago
Some of it is about the agenda of the person writing it. The Fama-French 3 factor model still holds. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama%E2%80%93French_three-factor_model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama%E2%80%93French_three-facto...) Part of this is because Gene Fama doesn't have a hedge fund on the side. He advises DFA, but they want their customers to understand the model. (He also won this year's Economics Nobel)

paulgb 12y ago

A similar technique was used to "predict" Sarah Palin's choice as running mate in 2008. > In 2008, as John McCain prepared to announce his running mate, Fitzpatrick and his fellow trader Joe Schilling were monitoring the movements of all the contenders, calling their press secretaries and checking a flight-tracking website. They noticed a Gulfstream jet from Anchorage, Alaska, bound for the site of a McCain rally, and bought Sarah Palin, a longshot. When the surprise pick was unveiled, Fitzpatrick took home $25,000. Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewrice/the-fall-of-intrade-and-the-business-of-betting-on-real-life http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewrice/the-fall-of-intrade-and-t... (despite being from buzzfeed, the article is well worth reading)

rbanffy 12y ago
In mid 2012 the company I was working for went through a lengthy acquisition process. I started monitoring our corporate calendar and meeting rooms in Exchange. One day I figured out our CTO was leaving the company: our head of HR, the CTO and all his managers were to be unavailable in a couple hours, for the same 30 minutes and, at the same time, one of the meeting rooms was booked. It was announced the next day. Right after the meeting, one of his managers had several new bookings extending through most of his day. We accurately predicted (with some surprise) the successor.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Meta-use of a shared company calendar is worthy of a whole separate article, IMO. From personal experience - even if you can't see where your management is meeting or who they are meeting with, just knowing they will be out of the office can be valuable. Especially when you are job-hunting.
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    The only thing I've managed to use shared calendars for up to this point is figuring out when the meetings with leftover food were ending.
    - 12y ago

deathf 12y ago

Testing attention please.

andrewtbham 12y ago

Here is a video explaining the idea. http://vimeo.com/44382964 http://vimeo.com/44382964

yellowapple 12y ago

I'll take this to mean that we should just fire our CEO and not have to worry about problems ever again. ;)