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