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A comment on Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would outperform hedgefunds. Parent comment

Re:Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would out... by defen on Sunday September 17, 2017 @08:07PM (#15272432)
> it used to be possible to pretty accurately forecast large tech retailers' product sales each quarter (like Apple) by reverse engineering FedEx and UPS tracking numbers.

That's great. Were tracking numbers vendor-specific in some way? So you could, let's say, order an iPhone once a week and get an idea for how many iPhones (or total Apple products) were sold in that time period, just by using the tracking numbers? Was it dependent on geography in some way?

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Re:Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would out... by dsacco on Sunday September 17, 2017 @08:18PM (#15272476)
Yes, yes, no.
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Re:Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would out... by WalterBright on Monday September 18, 2017 @04:26AM (#15274213)
Reminds me of the British figuring out how many tanks the Germans made in WW2 by a sampling of the serial numbers.
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Re:Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would out... by rmc on Monday September 18, 2017 @05:00AM (#15274344)
That's genius! But then you have to buy a lot of iPhones, right? I suppose you can sell them on, and if you're getting ~$10k per quarter, it's OK. Or did you use a different approach?

What changed BTW? Did the format of tracking numbers change?

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Re:Buffett wins $1M decade-old bet that the S&P500 would out... by falsedan on Monday September 18, 2017 @06:04AM (#15274571)
> But then you have to buy a lot of iPhones, right?

Just two per carrier would do: one at the start of the quarter, and one at the end. Earnings dates happen weeks after the quarter ends, so you'd have heaps of time to peddle your analysis around.

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