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Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

alternativedata.org

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Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#2
The article mentions having a long history of data, but I want to stress a corollary of this: if you think you might eventually want to sell data, either put your data in an append-only data format now so that history is preserved, or at least take regular snapshots.

Otherwise, any time you update the data in place, you make it impossible to reconstruct what the data "looked like at the time" for a backtest.

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#3
post #2

The article mentions having a long history of data, but I want to stress a corollary of this: if you think you might eventually want to sell data, either put your data in an append-only data format now so that history is preserved, or at least take regular snapshots. Otherwise, any time you update the data in place, you make it impossible to reconstruct what the data "looked like at the time" for a backtest.

Definitely agree. I'm not on the level of these hedge funds but I do love using data for trading.

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#4
I run a business in this space. Realistically your chances of having data that is useful to a HF (of any kind) is pretty low so I wouldn't bank on it as a revenue source unless you have a strong reason to believe (1) your data is predictive of something an investor cares about and (2) isn't already covered by other data.

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#6
post #5

Does anyone else find it weird when a business like this uses the .org domain? Not to distract from the main discussion, just curious what people think on here.

It's not a business. It's a stale content marketing effort ran by one of the incumbents in the space who leveraged it as a means to promote themselves in front of their competitors.

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#8

I run a business in this space. Realistically your chances of having data that is useful to a HF (of any kind) is pretty low so I wouldn't bank on it as a revenue source unless you have a strong reason to believe (1) your data is predictive of something an investor cares about and (2) isn't already covered by other data.

Could I send you a sample?

I’m curious about certain data I’m scraping for a project.

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#9
Honestly if you have a predictive data set, most likely it is more profitable to use it to invest yourself than it is to sell it. Its like a successful startup raising VC funding, the good ones dont need the investors, the bad ones do.

Source is I used to work in this space. Clearly there are operational difficulties to investing and serious domain knowledge but if you have data with alpha, its worth insane amounts of money (seven figures a month).

Re: Selling Data to Hedge Funds (2017)

#10
post #5

Does anyone else find it weird when a business like this uses the .org domain? Not to distract from the main discussion, just curious what people think on here.

It's not a business. It's a stale content marketing effort ran by one of the incumbents in the space who leveraged it as a means to promote themselves in front of their competitors.

Indeed, you are correct (at least about being ran by the incumbents):

> AlternativeData.org is supported and maintained by YipitData and sources its content from hundreds of contributing investors, data providers, and industry professionals.

It would make sense for this to be aimed at data consumers rather than data producers, considering how the advice is, honestly, unrealistic.

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