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Comment by stock_toaster | Hacker News Reader

They could be desiring data (even anonymized) to assist leading edge prediction of market trends (purchasing, interest, etc) immediately as they happen. In a world of algorithmic trading and futures speculation, perhaps that matters a great deal?

It is goldman though after all, so you could be right!

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We know from this case https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-01-23/capita... of insider trading based on spending data at Capital One that such data would be extremely valuable. But it sounds like it would probably be illegal because merchants wouldn't agree to let their data be used like that.

I don’t see why merchants would have any choice, the payment networks hold the cards and they themselves sell it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...

Retailers may sell data (via payment networks) to Google so the latter can use it for their advertising business, but it seems (at least to Matt Levine in the article I linked) that they can't/won't sell it to hedge funds to trade on:

> does that mean that Capital One was allowed to trade on this data for its own profit? Wouldn't that be amazing? Surely the answer is no: I assume that Capital One signed agreements with retailers (or rather, with Visa and MasterCard, which signed agreements with retailers) in which it promised not to disclose transaction data, or use it for nefarious purposes.

If you think about it this makes sense. A retailer selling material non-public information to a hedge fund which then trades on it is essentially the same as them executing trades based on the data via the fund, which is obviously insider trading.

No, I don’t think that’s correct. “Selling” data is typically enough to make it “public” (i.e. it’s dissemination), after all most financial data isn’t available for free (e.g. stock prices).

That can't be right, otherwise a CEO could "sell" their revenue figures to a golf buddy who then trades on them. Possibly allowing a reasonably broad set of people to buy the data is enough, but I don't think that's what we're talking about here.

If it can be done in a privacy preserving way, I'm all for Goldman profiting from it and making the market more efficient at the same time. Goldman has done much worse things than this.

Sounds like trading on non public information and therefore insider trading to me.

Should you recheck this understanding in case you're leaving money on the table? Trade all you like in the US on NPI if you're not in fiduciary position w/r/t to the info holder and aren't picked out expressly in the rules as an insider. The classic example is the cabbie trading on NPI gleaned from his passengers' conversations. At least this is what I gleaned from securities law classes. IAAL but IANYL so take it for what it's worth.

You're right that my knowledge of insider trading isn't strong but according to sec.gov the following qualifies as insider trading:

>Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who traded based on information they obtained in connection with providing services to the corporation whose securities they traded;

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like this particular situation to me.

In this case, I think the "services" they are providing in conjunction with this offering would be to MasterCard, Apple, and the cardholder, so I don't thing they would be constrained with regard to anything else for /this data/. Though, I think it really depends on the agreements between MasterCard and Apple, about what data would be considered "misappropriated" though (see sweeneyrod's link[1]).

They still couldn't /legally/ trade on things like "companyX asked us for a loan, so let's buy/short/etc companyX before they announce it", as that would be servicing companyX directly, and they learned the information (about the loan) from that servicing.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20729529

Thank you for the response!

The customer segment served by the intersection of Apple and Goldman seems awfully narrow. I'm not sure there's much in it when it comes to gauging wider market trends.

> I'm not sure there's much in it when it comes to gauging wider market trends.

It's not about Apple customers AND Goldman Sachs customers, it's about consumer trends. Having access to millions of purchases as they happen is useful unto itself when it comes to market trends. In this day and age effectively anyone can get HFT hardware / software, but having that pipe of data is a real moat that your average shop cannot compete with.

That info has been available for a long time already to anyone who is willing to pay for it:

https://www.gsam.com/content/gsam/global/en/market-insights/...

The card networks can even receive data of exactly what is purchased at what price with level 3 data:

https://www.bluepay.com/payment-processing/gateway/level-3/

I know staples.com reports it because it shows you everything purchased on the AmEx statement, and hotel stays will have check in/check out dates.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. Goldman would be getting some data from Apple customers who were also using this Goldman issued credit card - hence "intersection".

Is that a diverse enough customer segment to draw any wider conclusions beyond this particular group of people? It seems pretty narrow to me, but perhaps you are right that the data has some value regardless.

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