Wall Street traders increasingly rely on surveillance, snooping to get an edge.

[reformist2]

They're really going to absurd and somewhat creepy lengths these days. And this they call productivity? I call it a waste of human minds.

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Traders Seek an Edge With High-Tech Snooping

A growing industry uses surveillance and data-crunching technology to supply traders with nonpublic information.


Traders looking to gain that crucial edge have resorted to partnering with high-tech surveillance companies that can help them predict nonpublic, market-moving information like oil supply reports and crop yields. One company even predicts retail sales by counting the number of cars in parking lots via satellite.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303497804579240182187225264

[KurtNYC]

1. the number of cars in the parking lot IS public information -- anyone can see it

It is the subject of small talk among neighbors -- "The mall was crowded" or "the mall was not crowded"

I can't read the article because it is behind a paywall but if it stuff like that and cameras that look at howmuch oil is in a refinery then that is not actionable information. You would need thousands of data points like that to indicate anything reliable. and by the time they are collected and modelled you have lost any alleged trading advantage.

Crop yields are a secret? You can see them from any highway. You can see the weather and the forecast.

There is other stuff that isn't high tech at all that traders or competing companies can use to figure out what another company is doing. Back in the dot com days, we used to look at the want ads that our competitors placed -- it told us how much hiring they were doing, what kind of back end technology they were using on their website and commerce, what cities they were moving into.

[Chrom]

2. I wonder if moles at the NSA might be helping out as well

They will tell us the legal stuff of course, but I doubt that is all they are really up to.