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