The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data • Hacker News Board

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#41

Post by hueving » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 8:50 AM UTC

dig1 wrote: post #17

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #10

> The financial services world has its own strong identity, handles massive amounts of money, and will not necessarily be in awe of your cool startup. When I was at Bloomberg, I used to cringe when startup founders would show up in hoodies, essentially destroying their credibility before the meeting even started. Who wants wall street awe? Who cares about credibility? Run a goddamn business, not a fan club. If you ca…

> Run a goddamn business,.... If you cared about image, you wouldn't talk about what people wear. Let's change perspective - what do you think, how much success will have business with web pages that looks like from 90-ties or products that looks like they are made in basement in spare time? (sure, there are exceptions, but well, they are exceptions :P). Everything is about image; if I'm going to invest in you, you b…

>if I'm going to invest in you, you better be shaved with ironed shirt and good suite. Simply, it's telling me you are serious about your business.

This is still not a justification for why we are wasting time and money on appearance. If it's just to show seriousness by cost, why not demand that everyone arrive brining a bowl of dollar bills?

When someone shows up in a suit to meeting here in the bay, I instantly assume that they spent so much time on appearance to distract me from the pile of bullshit they about to unveil.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#42

Post by parasubcutaneor » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 8:55 AM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #19

choward wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dressed up in suits lose accountability to me. It's like they are over-compensating for something.

Does that include lawyers and financial advisors too? Would you be OK with someone in jeans and a hoodie representing you in court? Would you be OK handing your life savings over to a money manager who was wearing a t-shirt and flip flops?

I deeply enjoy these sorts of distinctions in decorum, and the undercurrents of what it all must imply. It's all this subliminal signaling that tunes the pitch of an atmosphere to cultivate ideas.

Consider the duality of U.S. Marines, contrasting dress blues against combat BDU's. Or any military subculture for that matter.

Snappy dressers are trying to send a message about the money they burn on dry cleaning, and how early they get up to look sharp for their morning cup of coffee. How new their razor is, how orderly their coiffure seems. They have the time for this sort of thing, and they might have the time to waste on you ...if you're lucky.

And then there's nerd signaling. The next twelve hours to be spent scanning text, perched atop a swivel chair in comfortable clothes. Waking up possibly before before noon, because yesterday's dose of caffeine and inspiration carried through until 4:30 AM, when someone got their head bitten off in a forum by some cranky sleep-deprived rage about abuse of notation.

Meanwhile, in a court room, lives are irrevocably altered. People being hauled before a judge, to have their lives taken away from them, because they were born under a bad sign. There can't be any flippant hairstyles among the insiders of such a system. The whole point of showing up is to impress upon outsiders that a stone faced institution housed within a forrest of doric columns shall weigh and adjucate a decision. Clear voices in respectable, classic outfits must deliver verbal pronoucements with the reverb of a cavern older than the dawn of humankind. Janitors have mopped blood off these floors. This isn't some cluttered bedroom filled with the detritus of decades old junk.

Takes all kinds.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#43

Post by aangjie » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 9:42 AM UTC

laingc wrote: post #39

AznHisoka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also just plain dumb luck. stocks dont trade based on logic like revenue growth so if Trump tweets something negative about Starbucks and the stock goes down, but your data suggested Starbucks sales went up 300% last month, you are in tough luck. this is also probably why your data is worth much much less than you think. there are very few things that correlate very strongly to stock performance. predicting human emo…

If your data suggest that the stock is trading at a discount due to irrationality, then you have a perfect opportunity to buy lots of an underpriced stock.

I think the point OP was trying to make is that, that irrationality may not be easy to capture with automated systems, therefore the value of data is limited by your trading system/algorithm's ability to detect/predict irrational human behaviour. Or atleast that's what I read of it.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#44

Post by osullivj » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 9:44 AM UTC

laingc wrote: post #39

AznHisoka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also just plain dumb luck. stocks dont trade based on logic like revenue growth so if Trump tweets something negative about Starbucks and the stock goes down, but your data suggested Starbucks sales went up 300% last month, you are in tough luck. this is also probably why your data is worth much much less than you think. there are very few things that correlate very strongly to stock performance. predicting human emo…

If your data suggest that the stock is trading at a discount due to irrationality, then you have a perfect opportunity to buy lots of an underpriced stock.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Keynes.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#45

Post by wheelerwj » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 11:33 AM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #23

chollida1 wrote: post #2

Great article!! And i think it can probably be summed up with the sentence, unless your product has: - a long history of data - data that has low correlation to other available data sets - a very small group of people who have access to this data( ie exclusive deals with a few funds) Then its unlikely that you will be able to sell your data for any meaningful amount of money. A few things the author wrote that I thin…

Also just plain dumb luck. stocks dont trade based on logic like revenue growth so if Trump tweets something negative about Starbucks and the stock goes down, but your data suggested Starbucks sales went up 300% last month, you are in tough luck. this is also probably why your data is worth much much less than you think. there are very few things that correlate very strongly to stock performance. predicting human emo…

You don't think ever hedgefund is actively consuming social media data? How do you think the price of these stocks are affected so quickly?

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#46

Post by chrisan » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 12:27 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #19

choward wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dressed up in suits lose accountability to me. It's like they are over-compensating for something.

Does that include lawyers and financial advisors too? Would you be OK with someone in jeans and a hoodie representing you in court? Would you be OK handing your life savings over to a money manager who was wearing a t-shirt and flip flops?

> Does that include lawyers and financial advisors too?

Why shouldn't it?

I have never seen a lawyer in court with jeans and hoodie or a MM in T and flip flops. However...

Every ambulance chaser lawyers ad I have seen has always had some guy in a suit.

Every big financial crook has been in a very expensive suit.

When looking for a lawyer or advisor I would much prefer to know their track record and referrals/recommendations by others than be impressed by their suits.

That said, because of these bad stereotypes, if I was on the other side of the interview table as a lawyer or advisor I'd be in a suit no questions asked.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#47

Post by dsacco » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

aangjie wrote: post #43

laingc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your data suggest that the stock is trading at a discount due to irrationality, then you have a perfect opportunity to buy lots of an underpriced stock.

I think the point OP was trying to make is that, that irrationality may not be easy to capture with automated systems, therefore the value of data is limited by your trading system/algorithm's ability to detect/predict irrational human behaviour. Or atleast that's what I read of it.

Yes, the grandparent comment makes a good point. You can have plenty of solid data and still make a losing trade.

But, given enough data-informed trades that would otherwise be proditable, the law of large numbers suggests that an overall strategy will still be sound. You can afford to have the market be irrational here and there if you really are correctly forecasting earnings in advance most of the time.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#48

Post by dsacco » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #23

chollida1 wrote: post #2

Great article!! And i think it can probably be summed up with the sentence, unless your product has: - a long history of data - data that has low correlation to other available data sets - a very small group of people who have access to this data( ie exclusive deals with a few funds) Then its unlikely that you will be able to sell your data for any meaningful amount of money. A few things the author wrote that I thin…

Also just plain dumb luck. stocks dont trade based on logic like revenue growth so if Trump tweets something negative about Starbucks and the stock goes down, but your data suggested Starbucks sales went up 300% last month, you are in tough luck. this is also probably why your data is worth much much less than you think. there are very few things that correlate very strongly to stock performance. predicting human emo…

"Trump tweets a company name and the stock price decreases" is a signal. If you think about trading strategies as collections of consistent signals you can execute on, rather than assumptions that require market rationality, it doesn't really matter that a rogue event can cause an unpredictable response. The law of large numbers will generally protect you, given a consistent strategy and enough capital.

As an example, a hedge fund that consumes data capable of accurately forecasting earnings in advance can also diversify by consuming social media data. Matt Levine has written about profitable trading strategies developed with sentiment analysis on Trump's tweets. Instead of a hedge fund betting on the stock going up and getting blindsided by a random Trump tweet (or other irrational thing), it will use that as a signal if it can.

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#49

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #19

choward wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dressed up in suits lose accountability to me. It's like they are over-compensating for something.

Does that include lawyers and financial advisors too? Would you be OK with someone in jeans and a hoodie representing you in court? Would you be OK handing your life savings over to a money manager who was wearing a t-shirt and flip flops?

[deleted]

Re: The New Gold Rush? Wall Street Wants Your Data

#50

Post by ice109 » Sat, Jan 21, 2017, 2:16 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #22

"You cannot sell data you don’t own. Hedge funds care immensely about the legality of the data." Thats a shame as this makes this business model almost impossible for the average reader here. There are loads of outside data that if crawled and gathered could be useful to hedge funds. things like: - growth in number of Amazon reviews for a type of product month to month(against amazon tos to scrape them) - number of j…

you're wrong. that's public data and you absolutely can sell it. hedge funds are worried about insider trading so if you can make the case that the data you used to trade was available to everyone then it's cleared by compliance. source: I work for a startup that does that and has 1MM rar.