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Alternative Data Through a Compliance Lens – Seven Key Considerations for 2023

Alternative Data Through a Compliance Lens – Seven Key Considerations for 2023

Data compliance has always been an important subject, however, there have been several key events that have paved the way toward where we are today. We are now seeing regulators proactively examining firms’ policies and procedures with more intent. Data sources considered higher risk than others are now found in the regulatory and media spotlight, and varying regional regulations are impacting the funds’ global strategies.

The Curious Case of TikTok and What Asset Managers Should Pay Attention To

The Curious Case of TikTok and What Asset Managers Should Pay Attention To

New industries are typically fragmented with numerous small players competing for market share. Industries then consolidate as they become more mature. According to A.T. Kearney’s study, all industries go through a consolidation life cycle which consists of five stages – opening, plateau, concentration, dominance, and reopening. Every company in every industry goes through these stages or disappears. Increased competition, changing regulations, new technologies, and increasing customer sophistication is putting pressure on today’s technology leaders and alternative data vendors. Companies would mostly pursue mergers and acquisitions to gain scale advantages and accelerate growth. A size advantage often lowers costs leading to competitive advantage and to competitive price setting.

Eagle Alpha’s Second Annual Alternative Data Industry Report

Eagle Alpha’s Second Annual Alternative Data Industry Report

Eagle Alpha’s second annual alternative data industry report explores industry-wide alternative data growth and trends, M&A in the alternative data vertical, the most engaged research and publications from the year gone by, and outlines the resolve to solve buyer and vendor needs through product development including platforms, improved taxonomy, data connectivity, and compliance features.

Alternative Data M&A is Heating Up: Looking Back and Ahead

Alternative Data M&A is Heating Up: Looking Back and Ahead

New industries are typically fragmented with numerous small players competing for market share. Industries then consolidate as they become more mature. According to A.T. Kearney’s study, all industries go through a consolidation life cycle which consists of five stages – opening, plateau, concentration, dominance, and reopening. Every company in every industry goes through these stages or disappears. Increased competition, changing regulations, new technologies, and increasing customer sophistication is putting pressure on today’s technology leaders and alternative data vendors. Companies would mostly pursue mergers and acquisitions to gain scale advantages and accelerate growth. A size advantage often lowers costs leading to competitive advantage and to competitive price setting.

Satellite Data for Investors: A Note on Recent Market Trends and Demand Drivers

Satellite Data for Investors: A Note on Recent Market Trends and Demand Drivers

Satellite data, also referred to as geospatial data, is photographic images collected by satellites orbiting the earth and can be enhanced with data from drones and radar. Asset managers first tried using satellite data back in 2010 with CNBC reporting that “Cold War-style satellite surveillance is being used to gather market-moving information”. According to the article, UBS Investment Research used data from RS Metrics to count cars in Walmart parking lots to help estimate revenues, a strategy also implemented by Walmart’s founder Sam Walton using airplanes in the 1970s.

The View from the Lakeshore

The View from the Lakeshore

Much has been said in the data world about ideal states: “Data at your fingertips”, “Plug-and-play insights”, “Empower your whole organization with data”, and “Democratizing insights from data”. This list is long, and to be honest, does sound great. There is value in setting such big-picture goals in an organization, but often the route to go from here to there is a lot harder than initially considered. Data Warehouses such as Snowflake are often proposed as the solution that ushers in this step-change in organizational performance. If only your data was one well-defined, easy-to-understand, definitely maintained query away, everyone would be able to incorporate it into their day-to-day decisions. At Eagle Alpha, we think Data Warehouses can be useful but often find ourselves in a chicken-and-egg situation with them. As mentioned, Data Warehouses do their best when the data is organized, but who is supposed to do that organizing and how? How do you know what to set up so that data users in your organization can hit the ground running when all you have are 300,000 poorly named CSV files of unknown content scattered across 1500 sub-directories of sub-directories? The ideal starts to drift pretty far away when that is the reality – a reality that many organizations face even with the internal data that they nominally can control the production of. Add in the requirement to incorporate external third-party sources of data, and soon addressing the ambiguity and confusion that stems from this data circus becomes the all-consuming job of many data engineering teams.

Data Sourcing: The Key to Any Alternative Data Initiative

Data Sourcing: The Key to Any Alternative Data Initiative

As asset managers invest resources into building out alternative data initiatives, data sourcing is seen as an integral part of the process, with in-house and outsourced professionals finding and introducing datasets and data vendors. With datasets rapidly growing in price and impacting the growth in spending of firms buying alternative data, the data sourcing function is now more critical than ever before. These results are based on our first-of-its-kind survey of 24 buyside funds with varying levels of alternative data experience.