Ferrari vs. Markets (opens in new tab)

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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