Since the beginning of the century, the number of satellites orbiting Earth has increased more than 800%, from less than 1,000 to more than 9,000. This profusion has had a number of strange and disturbing repercussions. One of them is that companies are selling data from satellite images of parking lots to financial analysts. Analysts then use this information to help gauge a store’s foot traffic, compare a retailer to competitors and estimate its revenue.
This is just one example of the new information, or “alternative data”, that is now available to analysts to help them make their predictions about future stock performance. In the past, analysts would make predictions based on firms’ public financial statements.
