Traders On Look-Out For High-Tech Snooping Techniques

In the film Wall Street, Charlie Sheen's character Bud Fox secretly followed around a British billionaire, Sir Lawrence Wildman, to discern his next move. Fox concluded that Wildman was meeting with key people in order to make a bid for a steel company.

If Bud Fox was still up to gathering corporate intelligence, it is likely he would be in somehow involved with a company known as Genscape.

Genscape conducts flights over oil storage facilities and utilizes a heat-sensitive camera at the huge storage tanks below.

Through advanced and highly accurate technology, Genscape is able to gauge what the Wall Street Journal describes as “a remarkably accurate preview of a market-moving U.S. government report on oil supplies.”

Technically there is nothing illegal about the company's operation that sells its findings to traders and other market professionals for a hefty fee of $90,000 a year.

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The U.S. Energy Information Administration releases a weekly survey of gas levels. When Genscape's high-tech information gathering notice a buildup in the oil supply, this is an indication there is an ample supply of oil in the market. The price of oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange should drop accordingly.

Between July and late November, Genscape's reports were 100 percent accurate in predicting the direction of every change in the EIA report and shifts in the commodities market.

The company's CEO defends his actions as bringing transparency to markets long dominated by stereotypical evil oil companies.

Genscape also tracks oil shipments leaving European ports, using 800 antenna stations, videotapes railcars of crude oil and follows them to their destinations.

Genscape isn't alone in the new era of high-tech corporate intelligence gathering.

Remote Sensing Metrics provides clients with satellite imagery of parking lots at major retail chains such as Lowe's and Target. The company has partnered with DigitalGlobe who provides the commercial earth imagery products and services.

By gaining a birds eye view of the parking lot, Remote Sensing Metrics can count the number of cars to gain a better understanding of the company's performance.