Hi everyone, 

As we all know we are in a pandemic, and retail stores have been hit exceptionally hard by this. One way to model the profitably or recovery of these stores is by analyzing their foot traffic. 

The algorithm uses foot traffic data purchased from SafeGraph to trade Home Depot. If the slope of the one-week simple moving average is negative we enter a short position and if positive we enter a long position. Also, trades are submitted every trading day at 8:30 am. 

Although the data set only looks back one month, the approach of using alternative data can provide investors with unique insights and patterns on the returns of a particular stock, ETF, or sector.

Some unanswered questions: What is the average spend per customer? Is there an inverse correlation between in-store sales and online sales?

To protect the IP of SafeGraph's data, the dropbox link included in the algorithm does not work. However, they are offering discounts for their data which can be found here.

 

Cheers,

Jovad Uribe

Author