Stock Picks from Space (2019)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
This is no more "cheating" than using any other pseudo-publicly available sources of information, such as credit card purchase data, yelp/foursquare/FB checkins, or whatever. It's entirely legal in the same way sitting outside Macy's and counting the number of people who enter and leave through the public entrances.
I know that's unfair. But the way I feel, there's lots of absurdity in this. In a more reasonable world, if you wanted to know when some CEO is leaving on vacation, you'd just ask them. You wouldn't have to spy on them with a satellite.
If you're referring to derivitives, you could technically refer to it as zero sum, since speculating on a contract between two parties doesn't necessarily create value. But there's an argument to be made that options actually help liquidity, and the act of being able to purchase insurance contracts on investments reduces risk, meaning more people are likely to invest, which does, in the end, actually create value.
But is that due to trading? I thought it's due to population growth and progress of technology creating more wealth faster.
A locally zero-sum game in a growing environment may not feel like zero-sum.
This is true of any security be it equities or bonds or derivatives.
Value isn’t created through trading, but both parties can be made better off because their preferences are different. For example I’m in my late 20’s and don’t need all of my income to live. I don’t mind taking risk for a higher return I could enjoy in the future. My parents are in their mid 60s and have a more immediate need for their money and would be willing to take less return for more stability. Me trading cash for their equities would make us both better off.
It's not cheating, but it's something you probably can't compete against, so you shouldn't try.
"Yes but we do more sophisticated data analysis anyway" - firstly, I call BS on that CEO & management career self-marketing and secondly, if I'm wrong and it's already being done at an excellent level there is nothing to fear putting it out there - you can spank analysts doing a shoddy job with hard analysis scotching undeserved "impression, zeitgeist and rumour" based negative market sentiment.
Of course every board of directors should have an IT committee and a data committee to go with the audit committee with a similarly highly qualified chair of those comittees. It's basically unthinkable not to have a very qualified accountant on the board. Should be the same for IT and Data - although IBM Global Services, Accenture, Oracle etc etc will campaign heavily against having people who know what they're doing on the board!
Chair of the data committee would be a crucial figure in earnings calls and so on - they better know their stats!