As programmers and computers are substituting traditional portfolio managers, investment professionals need to ask themselves the following question: "Does your career have a vision for big data?"
Michael Beal, Data Capital Management CEO, discussed how his hedge fund uses big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to trade the market - video below.
Most investment managers don’t have the architecture to consume data like Point72. Therefore, alternative data vendors need to provide good UX to access data. There is still a lot of work to be done in terms of interpretation and analysis when alternative data becomes widespread.
Braxton Mckee, CEO of Ufora - a data consulting and technology company - explained what signs indicate that a hedge fund is taking Big Data seriously.
Baidu Inc. started using its own data in order to gauge China's economy. The goal is to construct better indicators compared to the ones using the official government figures.
Gene Ekster, CFA is Eagle Alpha’s advisory board member who works with asset management firms and data providers in a consulting capacity to help integrate alternative data into the investment process.
Eagle Alpha has spent over 2 years perfecting proprietary indices using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) approach.
Jeff Shen, co-chief investment officer of BlackRock’s Scientific highlighted the importance of unusual sources such as satellite imagery, Q&A transcripts, online search and social media.
Tonia Ouellette Klausner, a partner with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and a member of their Internet Law and Strategy Group, explained how buyside firms are using web crawling software and how legal risks could be mitigated.
German fund manager, Catana Capital, decided to launch a hedge fund solely based on Big Data analysis. The idea is to process massive datasets using artificial intelligence algorithms and make investment decisions according to independent signals. Catana Capital is pursuing a four-step strategy.
Eagle Alpha gathers alternative data sources to analyse the Auto Industry in different ways, some details are described in our case study.
Daniel Goldberg is Eagle Alpha’s advisory board member who ran TangentDS – a company which turned email receipts into actionable insights. Prior to this, Mr. Goldberg was an analyst at Hunter Global and Bear Stearns.
