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Airportatrage

Open source intelligence = investment happiness
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Airportatrage consists of a crack cadre of agents that, armed with photographs of every Fortune 500 CEO, VP of Business Development, and VP of Sales, simply watch who enters and leaves a set of selected airports, and with who. A second set of agents watch the entrance to a set of select Hilton, Four Seasons, and Mariott hotels. This data is relayed back to Airporatrage Central.

Armed with this data, Airportatrage traders build travel maps for these executives and attempt to determine who is trying to do mergers and large deals with who. (On the assumption that these things need to become face to face meetings at a critical phase in their development.) Armed with this perfectly legal data, stocks are bought and sold at critical moments before these deals are announced.

Additional value is taken by seeing who is flying off to Vegas or the Betty Ford Clinic on the sly.

tspyz, May 14 2002

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       Open source intelligence = consumer happiness   

       Open source intelligence = intellectual happiness   

       Open source intelligence = "transparency" (which seems to be the buzzword these days, but maybe not for the right reasons?)   

       ê ãëàñíîñòè!
LoriZ, May 14 2002
  

       This is pretty much what financial journalists do now, without the cost of a dedicated spy force.
UnaBubba, May 14 2002
  

       Much harder when the execs are flying from smaller municipal airports in biz jets, boarded in the seclusion of a private hanger. If you manage to get photos of those boardings it's probably no longer legal data to trade with.
bristolz, May 14 2002
  

       Probably no real trouble with private trading, if the data is obtained in accordance with local laws.   

       However, as the Compaq / HP merger has shown, not all mergers have a predictable, or desirable, outcome. Unless you've gone short on the players in question. Most analysts would have picked the increased market share and reduction of duplicated overhead to be beneficial, I'd have thought.
UnaBubba, May 15 2002
  

       I'm probably being stupid, but whence the name of the idea?
pottedstu, May 15 2002
  

       It's a hybrid of airport and arbitrage.
UnaBubba, May 15 2002
  

       Airport-at-rage. Probably refers to the rage of the exec when caught at the airport by the agent.
neelandan, May 16 2002
  

       Anything to do with arbitrage pricing theory?
LoriZ, May 16 2002
  

       More to do with arbitrary fleecing theory.
bristolz, May 17 2002
  
      
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