Fudged numbers won’t make the US grow faster

Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s Noah Smith examines the real risks of “alternative facts” and illustrates how alternative data’s importance could be elevated in this new landscape. Read More

Can Wall Street embrace the open source movement?

Wired

Numerai’s 29-year-old CEO launched a new digital currency and trading system for his AI hedge fund, which rewards collaboration as opposed to greed. Read More

Re-imagining active investment management

Hedge Funds Club

Younger hedge funds are capitalizing on three modern themes: alternative data, the gig economy and the end of Two and Twenty. Read More

Peter Lynch was the earliest adopter of alt data

Integrity Research Associates

Turns out that some uber-progressive sentiment strategies are nothing more than a scaled update of Peter Lynch’s successful recipe for the Magellan Fund. Read More

Stanford researchers measure African farm yields with high-res satellites

Stanford News

Terra Bella satellite images of African farms prove detailed enough to accurately measure and predict crop yields, according to researchers at Stanford University. Read More

Big data to become new revenue generator for Latin American telcos

MarketWatch

LatAm telcos seek new revenue strategies by doubling down on their data collection efforts to create saleable assets. Read More

Software is eating hedge funds

InvestorDaily

Many clever Wall Street money-making activities have been disrupted by tech start-ups and hedge funds are not immune. Quandl Chief Data Officer Abraham Thomas explains. Read More

Why data nerds struggle to gain power at hedge funds

Bloomberg

Hedge funds have been loading up on data scientists and coders to deliver on the promise of quantitative investing. But they are discovering that the marriage of old-school managers and data-driven quants can be rocky. Read More

And Matt Levine’s hilarious follow-up

Bloomberg

Matt Levine is the only person who can make quant funny. Read his reaction to the above article, and learn about the golf score trading strategy (scroll to the middle of his column). Read More

Silicon Valley’s rising influence on hedge funds

eFinancialCareers

Hedge funds are struggling to attract and retain the tech talent needed to keep up with their data demands. BCG suggests they will have to adopt a Google-like culture to succeed. Read More

Barriers to adoption for alternative data

Foundation & Endowment Intelligence

Alternative data promises to be the holy grail of quantitative investing. So what’s the holdup? The usual suspects: cost, time and resources. Read More

Breaking down the Estimize Signal

Estimize

Estimize opens the kimono and gives us unfettered access to the multi-factor model behind the proprietary Estimize Signal. Read More

How to engineer serendipity in financial services

BrightTALK

In this recorded webinar, MapD’s Todd Mostak shows how to engineer eureka moments by combining massive, proprietary data with next-generation visualization tools to see what others cannot. Read More

Artificial Intelligence & Data Science in Capital Markets

Newsweek Events

Join Quandl founder and CEO Tammer Kamel in London on March 1st where he will speak about “The Power and Perils of Alternative Data for Alpha Generation”. Read More

Why hedge funds are better than Facebook

Business Insider

Matei Zatreanu of System2 LLC tells it like it is when it comes to competing for talent in the exploding realm of quantamental investing. Read More »

Silicon Valley hedge fund takes on Wall Street with AI trader

Bloomberg

This Silicon Valley data scientist has spent nearly a decade training an AI system to run his hedge fund soup to nuts — and now he’s challenging the Wall Street pros. Read More »

Goldman embraces automation

MIT Technology Review

600 equity traders have been replaced by 200 engineers at Goldman Sachs, with currency trading and investment banking headed in the same direction. Read More »

Alternative data for alpha

Dun & Bradstreet

We all know many are turning to alternative data in search of alpha. But it is not without its challenges. Visit the following link and scroll down to “Featured Resources” for the Greenwich Associates’ “Alternative Data for Alpha” report. Read More »

SpaceKnow raises $4m to provide satellite data to investors

Financial Times

Investments in alternative data continue. The funding round comes soon after Prattle, an AI-driven sentiment analysis firm, received $3.3m. Read More »

The hedge funds where computers call the shots

Wall Street Journal

While there is a great deal of buzz surrounding AI funds, launching and selling their benefits to clients is proving to be no easy task. Read More »

Trump tweets and stock sentiment: akin to an opening bid

Buzz Indexes Blog

An interesting take on the effect of the Trump tweet: It’s not the tweet itself that matters, but the ensuing conversation. Read More »

Quant firms top list of best hedge funds

Forbes

Quantitative juggernauts, including D. E. Shaw, Citadel, Bridgewater and Two Sigma, make the LCH top 20 hedge funds this year. Read More

A deluge of alternative data

Traders Magazine

While alternative data holds much promise, this article cautions that the overwhelming supply could severely impact its adoption, at least in the short-term. Read More

Alternative data still in its infancy

Greenwich Associates

While 80% of investors seek greater access to alternative data sources, Greenwich Associates suggests there are many challenges to using the data. Read More

Chicago trading firms have a Twitter crush

Crain’s

Crain’s indicates that sentiment analysis is surging among Chicago trading firms, thanks again to Trump’s Twitter “bully pulpit.” Read More

Trump’s tweets are driving quant traders crazy

Business Insider

On the flip side, Business Insider suggests that Trump’s tweets are too sporadic to serve as a meaningful trading strategy for discerning quant firms. Read More

How to engineer serendipity in financial services

BrightTALK

A free webinar for you to consider, covering the rise of GPU-powered analytics with use cases for capital markets. Read More

Data trends in capital markets for 2017

BWDISRUPT

Unsurprisingly, 2017 is expected to be a pivotal year for the adoption of big data, analytics and artificial intelligence in capital markets. BWDISRUPT makes five predictions on what we will likely see in the next twelve months. Read More

The mind-blowing AI announcement from Google that you probably missed

Medium

A fascinating debate on whether Google’s Neural Machine Translation system (GNMT) invented its own language or not. Read More

The future belongs to the quantamental

LinkedIn

From the COO of Qineqt, a thoughtful piece that argues quantamental is the only way forward in an era where we are “drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” Read More

Two Sigma buys space in Cornell Tech building

The Cornell Daily Sun

In support of “gain[ing] value from the world’s data,” Two Sigma will operate its Collision Lab in Cornell’s Bridge building, set to open in September. With the move, the hedge fund hopes to surround itself with bright students and big ideas. Read More

Six areas of AI and machine learning to watch closely

Medium

Brush up on your AI with this efficient primer outlining six key themes noteworthy for their ability to impact digital products and services. Read More

GCM Grosvenor invests in alt data start-up Prattle

Business Insider

Prattle, an alternative data start-up that offers quantitative data on central bank communications, raised a $3.3 million seed round of financing led by GCM Grosvenor. Read More

China goes from fake GDP data to no data amid worries about housing market

Financial Review

Two publishers of Chinese real estate data confirmed they will no longer publish monthly home prices, insinuating that the discrepancy with government reports is not acceptable. Read More

Glassdoor provides free access to data for investors

Financial Times

Fund managers are using the company review board to perform due diligence, but they must beware of bias and opportunities for abuse. Read More

Artificial intelligence hedge funds outperforming humans

Investopedia

According to Eurekahedge, AI-driven funds have returned 8.44% over the past six years, versus 2.62% for the CTA/Managed Futures index and 1.62% for the trend following index. Read More

Conference alert: AI and data science for capital markets

Newsweek

Newsweek and IBT are hosting this event in London, March 1-2. Prominent alternative data providers, academics and technologists will be in attendance. Read More

Hedge funds head for the final frontier

MoneyWeek

Identifying signals from mountains of data is hard and expensive, so is it really worthwhile to seek alpha through alternative datasets? Orbital Insights and Matt Levine from Bloomberg.com share their approach. Read More

Crop Forecasters Take Matters Into Their Own Hands — Literally

The Wall Street Journal

Some swear by touch and feel, while others think computers and drones can do the job. As agriculture uses new technology, corn and soybean investors have to decide which method of forecasting is most reliable in this multi-billion dollar industry. Read More

Agtech Funding Sheet: FarmShots Raises Seed Round

AgFunderNews

Further proof that the young agtech sector continues to bloom. The data and technology are there, but will they be available to the financial industry? Read More

Calling all stock trading geeks: Quantopian wants your trading ideas

CNBC

We can’t let the explosion of new data go to waste. That’s why Quantopian wants talented data scientists from all over the world to submit their trading algorithms to its platform. Read More

A Vancouver ‘alternative data’ startup raised $2.7 million to corner the market on Big Data financial analysis

Geektime

A new company is hoping to join the ranks of Thinknum, Eagle Alpha and Discern. Welcome Canalyst – the latest startup to enter the ever-growing list of alternative data players. Read More

Unexpected Risk Meets Unexpected Data

Institutional Investor

Media outliers, the weather and online retail. These are all sources of information that investors can use to predict outcomes from black swan events and protect their portfolios. Read More

Next Economics: Interview with Jimi Crawford

Fast Forward Labs

For Orbital Insights, hedge funds are just the beginning. The satellite company wants to understand the Earth and reduce economists’ reliance on government reports by quantifying observations about the physical world instead. Read More