A Wall Street economist who served institutional clients at both Lehman Brothers and Bank of America, Michelle Meyer, transitioned to Mastercard two and a half years ago, now serving as the firm’s Chief Economist and Head of the Mastercard Economics Institute. I had the opportunity to catch up with Michelle back in May and while much has of course happened in the world since, there are some valuable insights shared in our discussion.

We first survey the similarities and differences in her new role at Mastercard versus the traditional sell-side economics role in which she served. Here, she says that in terms of process, markets were formerly the output but are now more of an input that informs her thinking on longer horizon economic trends and their implications. The audience, of course, is different as well, and hedge funds eager for insights on the most recent econ data release are not the priority they once were.

We spend the bulk of our conversation on the vast and rich data set of transactions being generated by Mastercard in real time and around the globe. Michelle and team harness this anonymized data to better understand consumer trends – in travel, in good versus services, across geographies, even across zip codes. On this last part, we talk about two “hyper-local” surges in demand captured by the data – the Swift Lift coming from Taylor Swift concerts and the increased demand along the April solar eclipse line of totality. Really fascinating data. I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my discussion with Michelle Meyer.