Space – the final frontier, and the latest tool in investors’ decision-making arsenal, according to this Atlantic piece. RS Metrics was founded by two brothers followed a hunch of Walmart’s founder: the number of cars in a store parking lot is an indication of how well the store is doing. Revamping this concept with real-time satellite imagery, the brothers started selling parking lot counts of major retailers to investors. They got their big break in 2010 when a UBS analyst bought 100 representative Walmart parking lot counts and used them to correctly predict that Walmart’s stock was undervalued.

A level playing field? RS Metrics today sells a variety of satellite imagery to investors trying to pick stocks. They’re not alone. The “alternative data space race” has spawned a field of companies like RS Metrics who sell everything from geolocation to online browsing activity to investment firms for hundreds of mns of USD. This begs two important questions: How valuable is alternative data? And does the everyday investor benefit, too?