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Alternative data (in finance) refers to data used to obtain insight into the investment process. [1] [2] These data sets are often used by hedge fund managers and other institutional investment professionals within an investment company. [3] [4] [5] Alternative data sets are information about a particular company that is published by sources outside of the company, which can provide unique and timely insights into investment opportunities. [3] [6]
Alternative data sets are often categorized as big data, [7] which means that they may be very large and complex and often cannot be handled by software traditionally used for storing or handling data, such as Microsoft Excel. An alternative data set can be compiled from various sources such as financial transactions, sensors, mobile devices, satellites, public records, and the internet. [3] [8] [9] [10] Alternative data can be compared with data that is traditionally used by investment companies such as investor presentations, SEC filings, and press releases. [11] These examples of "traditional data" are produced directly by the company itself.
Since alternative data sets originate as a product of a company's operations, these data sets are often less readily accessible and less structured than traditional sources of data. [3] [12] Alternative data is also known as "data exhaust". [13] The company that produces alternative data generally overlooks the value of the data to institutional investors. During the last decade, many data brokers, aggregators, and other intermediaries began specializing in providing alternative data to investors and analysts. [14] [15]
Examples of alternative data include:
Alternative data is being used by fundamental and quantitative institutional investors to create innovative sources of alpha. The field is still in the early phases of development, yet depending on the resources and risk tolerance of a fund, multiple approaches abound to participate in this new paradigm. [19] [20]
The process to extract benefits from alternative data can be extremely challenging. The analytics, systems, and technologies for processing such data are relatively new and most institutional investors do not have capabilities to integrate alternative data into their investment decision process. [21] However, with the right tools and strategy, a fund can mitigate costs while creating an enduring competitive advantage. [19]
Most alternative data research projects are lengthy and resource intensive; therefore, due-diligence is required before working with a data set. The due-diligence should include an approval from the compliance team, validation of processes that create and deliver this data set, and identification of investment insights that can be additive to the investment process. [19] [22]
However, the usage of the alternative data is not restricted by investment sphere, it is successfully used in economics and politics as well as retail and e-commerce spheres. It is possible to predict geopolitical risk through a profound alternative data analysis, while social media sites reveal a host of data for consumer sentiment analysis.
Alternative data can be accessed via:
In finance, Alternative data is often analyzed in the following ways:
While compliance and internal regulation are widely practiced in the alternative data field, there exists a need for an industry-wide best practices standard. Such a standard should address personally identifiable information (PII) obfuscation and access scheme requirements among other issues. Compliance professionals and decision makers can benefit from proactively creating internal guidelines for data operations. Publications such as NIST 800-122 [24] provide guidelines for protecting PII and are useful when developing internal best practices. Investment Data Standards Organization (IDSO) was established to develop, maintain, and promote industry-wide standards and best practices for the Alternative Data industry.
Legal aspects surrounding web scraping of alternative data have yet to be defined. Current best practices address the following issues when determining legal compliance of web crawling operations:
Web scraped data refers to data harvested from public websites. With 4 billion webpages and 1.2 million terabytes of data on the internet, there is a mountain of information that can be valuable to investors when analyzing a corporate performance. The companies that specialize in this type of data collection, like Thinknum Alternative Data, [25] [26] [27] write programs that access targeted websites and collect and store the scraped information on a periodic basis. In some cases web scraping requires use of public APIs as a way to access the data within those pages directly without visiting the actual website. Types of web scraped data include:
Standards Board for Alternative Investment (SBAI) is the global standard-setting agency for the alternative investment industry and guardian of the Alternative Investment Standards. The agency supported by approximately 200 alternative investment managers and institutional investors and collectively manage $3.5 trillion. The SBAI has published the Standardised Trial Data License Agreement which addresses investment managers' issues when comes to new data trailing process, like alternative data and big data. [29] Thomas Deinet, Executive Director of the SBAI said: "This Trial Data Licence Agreement template highlights a number of very important issues, including personal data protection, which has become a hot topic in light of the overhaul of data protection regulation in many jurisdictions. It also includes key protections for managers in areas such as prevention of insider trading and 'right to use data'. It is crucial that managers and data vendors fully understand all risks when selling and using new data." [30]
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to and distinct from Economics which is the study of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The discipline of Financial Economics bridges the two fields. Based on the scope of financial activities in financial systems, the discipline can be divided into personal, corporate, and public finance.
A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. Among these portfolio techniques are short selling and the use of leverage and derivative instruments. In the United States, financial regulations require that hedge funds be marketed only to institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals.
In finance, valuation is the process of determining the value of a (potential) investment, asset, or security. Generally, there are three approaches taken, namely discounted cashflow valuation, relative valuation, and contingent claim valuation.
Investment management is the professional asset management of various securities, including shareholdings, bonds, and other assets, such as real estate, to meet specified investment goals for the benefit of investors. Investors may be institutions, such as insurance companies, pension funds, corporations, charities, educational establishments, or private investors, either directly via investment contracts/mandates or via collective investment schemes like mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or Real estate investment trusts.
The chief risk officer (CRO), chief risk management officer (CRMO), or chief risk and compliance officer (CRCO) of a firm or corporation is the executive accountable for enabling the efficient and effective governance of significant risks, and related opportunities, to a business and its various segments. Risks are commonly categorized as strategic, reputational, operational, financial, or compliance-related. CROs are accountable to the Executive Committee and The Board for enabling the business to balance risk and reward. In more complex organizations, they are generally responsible for coordinating the organization's Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) approach. The CRO is responsible for assessing and mitigating significant competitive, regulatory, and technological threats to a firm's capital and earnings. The CRO roles and responsibilities vary depending on the size of the organization and industry. The CRO works to ensure that the firm is compliant with government regulations, such as Sarbanes–Oxley, and reviews factors that could negatively affect investments. Typically, the CRO is responsible for the firm's risk management operations, including managing, identifying, evaluating, reporting and overseeing the firm's risks externally and internally to the organization and works diligently with senior management such as chief executive officer and chief financial officer.
Enterprise risk management (ERM) in business includes the methods and processes used by organizations to manage risks and seize opportunities related to the achievement of their objectives. ERM provides a framework for risk management, which typically involves identifying particular events or circumstances relevant to the organization's objectives, assessing them in terms of likelihood and magnitude of impact, determining a response strategy, and monitoring process. By identifying and proactively addressing risks and opportunities, business enterprises protect and create value for their stakeholders, including owners, employees, customers, regulators, and society overall.
Bridgewater Associates, LP is an American investment management firm founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. The firm serves institutional clients including pension funds, endowments, foundations, foreign governments, and central banks. As of 2022, Bridgewater has posted the second highest gains of any hedge fund since its inception in 1975. The firm began as an institutional investment advisory service, graduated to institutional investing, and pioneered the risk parity investment approach in 1996.
Alternative beta is the concept of managing volatile "alternative investments", often through the use of hedge funds. Alternative beta is often also referred to as "alternative risk premia".
An alternative investment, also known as an alternative asset or alternative investment fund (AIF), is an investment in any asset class excluding capital stocks, bonds, and cash. The term is a relatively loose one and includes tangible assets such as precious metals, collectibles and some financial assets such as real estate, commodities, private equity, distressed securities, hedge funds, exchange funds, carbon credits, venture capital, film production, financial derivatives, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, and Tax Receivable Agreements. Investments in real estate, forestry and shipping are also often termed "alternative" despite the ancient use of such real assets to enhance and preserve wealth. Alternative investments are to be contrasted with traditional investments.
Raymond Thomas Dalio is an American investor and hedge fund manager, who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York.
A financial data vendor provides market data to financial firms, traders, and investors. The data distributed is collected from sources such as stock exchange feeds, brokers and dealer desks or regulatory filings.
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), is a set of considerations, including environmental issues, social issues and corporate governance that can be considered in investing. Investing with ESG considerations is sometimes referred to as responsible investing or, in more proactive cases, impact investing.
An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages include an ability to:
A specialized investment fund or SIF is a lightly regulated and tax-efficient regulatory regime in Luxembourg aimed for a broader range of eligible investors. This type of investment fund is governed by the Luxembourg law of 13 February 2007 replacing the law of 1991 defining the legal framework for institutional funds and enlarging the distribution scope to "well-informed investors". The SIF law significantly simplified the rules for setting up investment fund structures ranging from straightforward investment strategies investing in listed securities to hedge funds, real estate and private equity funds.
Winton Group, Ltd is a British investment management firm founded by David Harding. In the United States, Winton is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisor and with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a CTA, and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. The company trades on more than 100 global futures markets in a wide variety of asset classes and on global equity markets. The firm was launched with $1.6 million in 1997, reached a peak of $28.5 billion in assets under advisement, before dropping to $7.3 billion by late 2020. Winton Group has six offices around the world: London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, and Abu Dhabi.
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) is a non-profit organization, founded in 2011 by Jean Rogers to develop sustainability accounting standards. Investors, lenders, insurance underwriters, and other providers of financial capital are increasingly attuned to the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors on the financial performance of companies, driving the need for standardized reporting of ESG data. Just as the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have established International Financial Reporting Standards and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), respectively, which are currently used in the financial statements, SASB's stated mission “is to establish industry-specific disclosure standards across ESG topics that facilitate communication between companies and investors about financially material, decision-useful information. Such information should be relevant, reliable and comparable across companies on a global basis.”
RepRisk AG is an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) data science company based in Zurich, Switzerland, specializing in ESG and business-conduct risk research, and quantitative solutions.
ESG Quant is an investment strategy, developed by Arabesque Partners, which involves quantitative equity investing while utilizing ESG information, often referred to as "non-financial" information. ESG Quant strategies are implemented within systematic trading or quantitative trading approaches that leverage a large and growing collection of commercial ESG, alternative and non-profit or academic datasets. As such, there is no human judgment or discretionary buy-sell decision making; rather, “in a pure quant model the final decision to buy or sell is made by the model” or through the “utilization of an expert system that replicates previously captured actions of real traders.”
The Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI), formerly known as the Hedge Fund Standards Board, is an international standard-setting body for the alternative investment industry and sets the voluntary standard of best practices and practices endorsed by its members. Its primary role is to be the custodian of the Alternative Investment Standards, which are designed to create a "framework of transparency, integrity and good governance" in the way the hedge fund industry operates.
The Investment Data Standards Organization (IDSO) is a U.S.-based organization that publishes Alternative Data standards. IDSO was established to support the growth of the Alternative Data industry through the creation, development, and maintenance of industry-wide standards and best practices. IDSO is a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization made up of companies in the Alternative Data industry such as data originators, intermediaries, and institutional investment funds.