5 ms·
Interesting, as the article notes - if Capital One had terms and conditions that said, "we can use sales data for unrelated purposes", they would be able to tra
by tomp 12y ago
Interesting, as the article notes - if Capital One had terms and conditions that said, "we can use sales data for unrelated purposes", they would be able to trade on that information themselves. I wonder who else has information that they're willing to use/sell to third parties... Facebook? Google? I wonder how predictive e.g. the ratios of likes of McDonald's/Starbucks/Chipotle pages are. Or clicks on display ads for Puma/Adidas shoes.
> Surely lots of Wall Street firms -- Chipotle is followed by 31 analysts -- and asset managers are doing tons of research to try to estimate Chipotle's sales. They're visiting branches and calling investor relations and talking to pork suppliers and surveying consumers and generally getting paid a lot of money to build a robust estimate of how many burritos Chipotle is selling. One more piece of data -- one credit card company's charges at Chipotle -- would be helpful, but come on, not that helpful.
Could we get this data any other way? How about putting cameras in front of a few flagship Chipotle stores and using CV to track the number of people going in/out? That's legal, AFAIK.
- foobarqux 12y agoNo one would do business with them if they had such terms.
- dangerboysteve 12y agoThe sat company, SkyBox, Google purchased mentions using sat images for predictive analytics that can be applied to investment decisions. http://www.skyboximaging.com/products#analytics http://www.skyboximaging.com/products#analytics
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoFollowing the logic in the article, you'd get the most efficient markets by making all financial transactions public and instantly accessible. Then everyone would have the maximum possible amount of information, which would lead to maximally efficient pricing. For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I don't expect this to happen any time soon. Which is one reason I remain skeptical that 'efficient pricing' has ever been a genuine goal.
- olefoo 12y agoOn the other hand "making all financial transactions public and instantly accessible" is one of the best arguments I've heard for pushing people towards bitcoin/blockchain style accounting systems. It would do all sorts of weird things to the theory of the firm forcing internal transactions to maintain information asymmetry.
- foobarqux 12y agoI don't follow the analogy. No one is voluntarily sharing private data with SkyBox that they don't want used in a way that SkyBox uses it.
- Grazester 12y agoWhat if the information they sold/use was anonymized and they gave you more rewards for card use for this information, would you be more inclined to use their card?
- GFischer 12y agoSomeone actually did that to count parking lot usage: https://gigaom.com/2010/08/18/parking-lots-help-predict-earnings/ https://gigaom.com/2010/08/18/parking-lots-help-predict-earn...
- WillNotDownvote 12y agoI used to joke you could set up webcams watching the freight rail lines out of ports, count the train cars and types with computer vision software, and sell the data to hedge funds.
- krschultz 12y agoNot a joke, people do that. They use satellites to measure stacks of containers, piles of coal, etc etc.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mncolinlee 12y agoI wonder if Google is doing this with Wallet transaction data. They may not be under the same terms as credit cards for every transaction.
- slayed0 12y agoIf Google wanted to do this they have much more powerful tools at their disposal than Wallet transaction data.
- uptown 12y agoRemember Blippy? https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blippy-social-commerce https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blippy-social-commer... http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/19/the-end-of-blippy-as-we-know-it/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/19/the-end-of-blippy-as-we-kno...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- tomp 12y agoThat's quite open to abuse, then... Set up two companies, one collects the data, the other trades. Sell the data "on the market", but set a ridiculously high price. The trading company would still buy it, because it knows that the data is worth that much. Eventually, the "public" might catch up to that, but then you simply set the price high enough to eliminate any potential profits of that information.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago> Eventually, the "public" might catch up to that, but then you simply set the price high enough to eliminate any potential profits of that information. How do you set the price high enough without making it unprofitable for the sibling-company as well?
- lmm 12y agoPrice it so the sibling-company breaks even. You don't care which company's making the profit, you own both of them.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoIf they're both your companies, why would it matter?
- toomuchtodo 12y ago> Could we get this data any other way? How about putting cameras in front of a few flagship Chipotle stores and using CV to track the number of people going in/out? That's legal, AFAIK. Analysts already do this with satellite data for parking lot occupancy rates for businesses.
- pc86 12y agoAre you suggesting someone has a satellite in geosynchronous orbit over a mall parking lot when they could just throw up a camera?
- pacofvf 12y agogeosynchronous satellites are used for communications, mainly, not for imaging, Low orbit satellites are used for that.
- kragen 12y agoGOES are geosynchronous, and used for imaging. They can't see parking lots, though!
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- krschultz 12y agoYes. http://www.cnbc.com/id/38722872# http://www.cnbc.com/id/38722872#.
- phkahler 12y ago>> if Capital One had terms and conditions that said, "we can use sales data for unrelated purposes", they would be able to trade on that information themselves. And then the employees wouldn't be guilty of insider trading. They would only be in violation of some agreement between them and their employer. Right?
- callmeed 12y agoHow about a company like Mint (Inuit). They've got data on poeple's debit cards from all the banks. They've also got categorical trend data (are people eating out more this month?).