Has credit card data already jumped the shark?

The Wall Street Journal

In many cases, credit card data points investors in the right direction… until it doesn’t. Investors are seeing increased volatility in the S&P Retail Index, possibly due in part to the widespread availability of credit card data that is only sometimes accurate. Has credit card data already diffused to the point of being table stakes for investors? The WSJ considers this possibility. Read More

Sensor-laden cars offer granular insights into many industries

Engadget

Qualcomm’s newly launched Drive Data platform weaves together data from the multiple sensors already in cars, including GPS, cameras and acceleration monitors. The dataset derived from this amalgamation could offer ultra-precise point-to-point location information, along with metrics for driver behavior, fuel consumption, environmental load and much more. Read More

Fake news? The markets have dealt with that for a long time

The Fresno Bee

As it turns out, fake news is old news for veteran investors. Barry Ritholtz points to the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814 as an early (and possibly fake) example. He suggests that quant funds’ algorithms are miles ahead of Facebook and Google, who are just starting to combat the problem. Read More

Mining unstructured insurance data for meaning

Property Casualty 360°

This is an impressive article about extracting meaning from text fields buried in the treasure trove of insurance data out there. While aimed at property and casualty insurance professionals, this piece describes the many ways in which unstructured insurance data can be useful. Read More

Apple set to underperform, according to Fiksu

Fiksu Blog

Fiksu is an alternative data provider with a sizable dataset of app downloads, mobile marketing events and profiles of mobile devices. In this blog post, they explain how their data shows a correlation between iPhone adoption rates and Apple’s subsequent performance relative to consensus analyst estimates. They are predicting, by the way, underperformance for the company in Q4 2016 and Q1 2017. Read More

Alternative data lands in business intelligence circles

CIO

You can skim this article; it is the mere fact of its existence that is wildly important: Alternative data has moved into the realm of BI. We know financial practitioners have been early adopters. Looks like we’re careening towards the early majority Read More

Big data highlights from 2016

Nanalyze

A quick look at the biggest big data stories of 2016. From Facebook, Twitter and Instagram battling Geofeedia to the ongoing debate about privacy and ever-increasing funding for data-centric start-ups, 2016 was a big year for big data. Read More

What can you do with a trillion social posts?

Crimson Hexagon

Create a nifty, interactive infographic, apparently. Social media listening platform Crimson Hexagon, founded in 2007, now has a trillion posts from social media in their data store. See what they did with it. Read More

When do you quit Ikea?

Vox

Credit and financing company Earnest promotes their data by asking fun questions of it. This week: When exactly do we stop shopping at Ikea? A hint: not until well, well after college. Read More