Alternative data is increasingly being used in private markets, including private equity, real estate, credit, and infrastructure, across deal origination, due diligence, and post-acquisition value creation and risk mitigation. Initially, interest in alternative data began when companies wanted additional information around digital market spend comparisons and reputation and social media review comparisons.

Employment data has been the 4th most popular alternative data category on the Eagle Alpha data discovery platform over the past 12 months, seeing a 40% YoY increase in the number of employment datasets onboarded. Job listings data provide asset managers holistic information on total employee count, job functions, skills, gender, and tenure which can then be used to measure firm performance, hiring strategy, employee turnover, headcount growth, and estimate expenses. Employment data can also take the form of employee profiles and company reviews which can help measure employee perception and sentiments, thus providing a good use case not only for firms dealing with public equities but also for private equity in the form of deal origination analysis and due diligence.

Cryptocurrency, or “crypto” as it has become widely referred to, has been one of the quickest moving trends in the investment space of late, with retail and institutional investors throwing their hats in the ring. While traditional markets must obtain all their information from external entities, through conventional channels like Bloomberg or via alternative sources such as satellite and geolocation, cryptocurrency provides the opportunity to also look at global internal data. Thanks to blockchain technology, you can get real-time statistics for anything on-chain.