Hedge funds are miles ahead of small investors when it comes to one crucial piece of market data
That means information on whether or not people are shorting a company's stock - or betting that it will fall. It's one of the best indicators of performance for any security, but the exchanges usually report the numbers about two weeks late, reports Bloomberg's Sam Mamudi and Saijel Kishan.
That's not very helpful, in a market where high-frequency traders make moves within fractions of seconds and access to information is key.
So hedge funds are paying up to get their hands on real-time data that small investors just can't afford.
Short sellers can have seriously negative impacts on a stock's price, but their positions are not always made public immediately.
A recent example of that is investor Whitney Tilson's short of Lumber Liquidators, a hardwood flooring retailer that allegedly used formaldehyde in its flooring.
Even before "60 Minutes" aired an investigation, citing Tilson, that ultimately tanked the company's stock, subscription data showed a record level of short interest in the stock, according to Bloomberg.
But small-time investors, waiting for data from the exchanges, would not have seen that information for weeks.