Ferrari vs. Markets | Hacker News Reader

Ferrari vs. Markets

ferrari-imports.enigmatechnologies.dev

62 pointsmerinid33 comments

Enigma Technologies sells customs manifest search; the Ferraris are marketing bait. Their headline correlations (Bitcoin +0.70, S&P +0.75) are meaningless — any two trending series from 2020–2026 will correlate due to shared macro shocks. Their own showcase contains VINs from Jaguar and Land Rover misclassified as Ferraris, revealing mechanical parsing without validation.

Look at these VINs:

SAJWA4GB2DLB50982 — This is a Jaguar VIN prefix, not Ferrari. Listed under “458 458 ITALIA”

SALLDHMV8BA298639 — This is Land Rover. Listed under “488 GTB TURBO ABS”

The page is data about data-selling, dressed as analysis.

This is the flat-earther epistemology problem.

Flat-earthers’ beliefs tell you nothing about the shape of the Earth, but their existence tells you something about humans. Similarly, this page tells you nothing about Ferraris or markets. It tells you what a B2B data company believes will attract clicks: luxury objects, stock tickers, correlation coefficients presented without methodology. The content is a signal about marketing culture, not economic signal about anything.

The web is saturated with this species of artifact, simply put, web pages built not to inform but to rank, to appear in searches, to gesture at sophistication while delivering none.

B2B is particularly fertile ground because the audience is assumed to be busy, skimming, and impressed by dashboards. The dozens of Ferrari photos aren’t information; they’re texture. The correlation numbers aren’t findings; they’re decoration.

This is the substrate on which large language models train. Not a library with noise, but a noise machine with library fragments embedded.

Billions of dollars spent to grow models that simply learn to reproduce the texture of authority with extreme confident tone, the fake mathematician with a white coat, the implied rigor.

No one is coming to clean this up because the garbage is the product. Pollution is the business model.

Wow, that’s a lovely analysis. I have nothing to add but thanks.

While I agree with this, it's ironic that you used AI to generate it, the very tool that enabled the marketing slop explosion of today.

That’s not a true stat.

I don't think this plot is very convincing. I will grant there's a feasible path that would imply causation, and Ferrari imports have increased just as BTC, SP500, and NASDAQ have. But aside from the macro-trend, the oscillations in the Ferrari import lines really don't seem to correlate with those investments. In fact, if you ran a linear regression on the numbers I bet you would find a _weak_ dependence. I can give you other things that correlate with BTC's move just about as much as Ferrari's do, just by manually looking for examples. For example, google search trends for 'electric vehicle'[1] and 'seed oil'[2] are both pretty close.

[1] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=electric%2520vehicle&dat...

[2] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=seed%2520oil&date=2020-0...

Every cargo shipment entering the U.S. generates a customs manifest—product descriptions, quantities, ports, shippers, and declared values. 8,818 Ferraris were detected in U.S. customs data from 2020–2026, averaging 121 per month. Import volumes correlate with Bitcoin (+0.70), S&P 500 (+0.74), and NASDAQ (+0.68).

Interesting correlation. Can we infer from this that Ferraris are typically purchased by people whose income comes from investments rather than salaries?

I mean an F50 went for $9M at Sotheby’s last year. That’s probably enough info to rule out salaried work.

I think for a new Ferrari there’s a fair chance it’s salaried individuals. There are quite a few folks who probably make enough to purchase a $400k-$800k car from their salaries. For ultra rare or special variants I think it’s unlikely as the percentage of someone’s net worth would likely be entirely consumed by the vehicle even at several million dollars a year. An example is an Enzo that sold this year for $17.6 million: https://www.thesupercarblog.com/ferrari-enzo-sells-for-a-rec...

FWIW—- that whole collection of cars, including the Enzo are 1 of 1 builds and it’s still shocking someone paid that much for a car with an absolutely heinous interior. I get it is unique, but it’s crazy someone paid that much for the privilege of owning the ugliest interior ever put in an Enzo. Reminds of the Ronald McDonald Viper from the mid 90s.

did you ever read the story of the fox and the grapes?

There's a certain swagger in saying "I don't care about resale value, I'm doing this for me"

90% of such supercar customers are criminals, either drug dealers or pimps. Dealership doesn't sell to them directly but third party. You see in the import logs that all of them are third party, from some Latin American sellers, none of them from Maranello. I dont understand why any rich folk wants to buy such a high-criminality symbol.

Eg the Germans meet up at the Cannes Film Festival every year. Almost all of them Hamburg pimps. With the occasional Hamburg Marketing pimp.

Appreciate you adding the correlations. Wow, those are higher than I would have thought.

I highly doubt they did this correlation properly. It looks like they just correlated two time series. Both series are correlated with time (both go up over time) and not each other. I eyeballed the series and correlated just the directions, when BTC goes up, it is 50/50 whether or not imports went up. I am pretty sure this correlation would be near 0 if you detrended the time series.

you would not expect that the purchase of luxury goods would correlate with appreciation in various investment markets?

if not then, when Lambo?

.74 is pretty weak for a correlation, and correlation is already mostly meaningless on its own

There was a sharp rise in demand/value since 2020 on cars like the 355 and 550, and some bit rarer but still significant in number cars like the 360 Challenge Stradale and 430 Scuderia. Especially for the 355 and 550, which exist in significant numbers, before 2020 these cars were $70-100k, but now with nice examples going from $150k-225k, it can make a lot more sense to import one from a softer market like Europe or Japan (especially since Japanese market examples are often extremely well kept and LHD), even if the cost of importing is $10-20k.

Check the results here - https://bringatrailer.com/ferrari/550-maranello/ Example EU market car, imported 2023 - https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1999-ferrari-550-maranello... JP market car, imported to Canada 2018 then US in 2024 - https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1999-ferrari-550-maranello...

In slovenia we have ~4000 Lamborghinis.... 99% are tractors :)

I'd love to know how many of these are direct from Maranello and how many of these are second hand. Ferrari doesn't sell directly to anyone unless you have a "relationship" with them. New models are highly restricted, it's not like you can just walk into a showroom so you can buy one even if you have all the money.

Is that true for all models? Even the “cheap”, mass produced ones?

More or less only for the high end models. Basically you apply for a model through the dealership > they send it to Italy where they accept it or not. If they do not they will usually offer you a lesser model first as you said. If they do then you get your car but you also have to sign a contract with them that they always have 1st call if you ever want to sell your car (if you break that they will never sell you again).

The big thing is that dealerships do not have new cars sat around on the lot waiting to be sold. They usually have second-hand cars available, but new cars are always built to order.

You can absolutely walk into a showroom and buy one. Not a rare model but you could walk in with no relationship and buy a 296 now.

I'd suspect many of them are - almost all go through new jersey if I remember correctly - with many going to Ferrari North America (FNA)

These beauties will never taste the tarmac of a racetrack where they belong :(

Actually they also belong in the living room of any mansion worth such name so I guess it's fair

Realistically, most of these aren't intended for a racetrack, any more than any stock car is. Race cars don't need all the design features on a Ferrari.

I've driven a friend's 488 on the track, so some of them certainly do!

I'd love to see a similar comparison for a full compendium of cars. Do BTC prices correlate with the number of Nissan Skyline GTR's that get imported? What about 911 GT3's? Would perhaps reveal something more causal than just BTC vs Ferrari's.

This is pretty big, if true. Ever since I discovered that pirates were holding back the forces of global warming, I have been looking for correlations such as these.

lol wut, pirates weren't holding back global warming. Rather, an increase in showering caused a decrease in smelliness, and _that_ caused global warming.

Be interesting to see this compared with, eg, BMWs or something - see if this is a “rising tide lifting all boats” or a distributional signal.

why the sharp divide around december 2022, with almost none imported before that and plenty after?

What about pre-December_2022? I cannot imagine that just a handful were imported.

would be curious to see how tarrifs changed it

Reply on news.ycombinator.com