Your last point is kind of what I had in mind with my question. Not to try to compete with UofM but to gather data to predict their results and use it for your own trades. You could hold the results private and play the market to beat even the high-frequency guys. You could even do a shoddy job of collecting the data to keep costs down but maintain, say, a 90% confidence in your prediction of UofM's numbers, that's enough to beat the market 9 out of 10 times.
You don't factor in the number of times UofM 'gets it wrong'. Even given their influence you wouldn't be winning 9 out of 10 times. But it could still be an edge.
