Thanks for being here!
This is the Alternative Data Weekly for Friday, June 16, 2023.
Announcement(s):
We have a new daily data product that offers end-of-day account balances across various types of accounts (savings, checking, CDs, personal, business, etc). Anonymous small regional & community banks. No PII. Very granular.
Check out 90 West’s data via Exabel: Alt Data Alerts - May 2023.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is …Getting your “data house in order” is increasingly important as new tools are developed to engage with your data.
QUOTES
“An increased use of technology, alternative data and artificial intelligence in the investment process continues to be a major industry trend.”
Anna Maleva-Otto, partner, at law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (Inputs & Filters)
#1 – Anna Maleva-Otto, partner, at law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel published Coming soon: How the adoption AI, alt data and electronic comms could herald an era of rapid regulatory change. June 2023.
My Take: A trusted regulatory infrastructure is a positive for the alternative data space. Standards increase confidence and broaden the potential market for this new type of data. Of most interest to me was the author’s comments about the backlash surrounding “greenwashing”. This is when a company purports to be environmentally conscious for marketing purposes but in reality, isn’t making any notable sustainability efforts.
#2 – Belle Lin of WSJ published Rush to Use Generative AI Pushes Companies to Get Data in Order. June 2023.
My Take: Getting your “data house in order” is becoming more of a priority as execs realize the power of LLMs. Garbage in = Garbage out. To make good use of these new tools, companies need to have data that is well governed, clean, & accessible. Whether companies decide to monetize externally or not, getting your arms around internal data is a valuable exercise.
#3 – Data Diligence’s Chelsea Wilkinson published Value creation & risks: Generative AI for private equity managers and portfolio companies. June 2023.
My Take: Chelsea shares with readers a list of value creation opportunities & the associated risks. The “Data Foundations” bullet point resonated with me as the thing companies/investors need to get done up front to make all else possible. Not an easy task, but one that pays big dividends if done well.
BONUS: Kyle Kirwan’s Six Common Signs It’s Time to Invest in Data Reliability. June 2023. I am a sucker for lists.
No Confidence in Your Analytics/Dashboards
Engineers and Data Scientists Ignoring Data Alerts
Failing Data Quality Initiatives
Data Pipelines Run on Fridays So Engineers Can Debug on the Weekends
The Number of Duplicate Tables Keeps Going Up
You Are Planning an IPO
What else I am reading:
Vin Vashishta’s Advanced Generative AI Products Business Leaders Must Pay Attention To Today: Intelligent Advisors. June 2023.
Ben Lorica’s What You Need to Know About GPT-4 and PaLM 2. June 2023.
Peter Wayner of Venture Beats What is reinforcement learning? How AI trains itself. September 2022.
AlphaROC has an email list to which they publish samples of their new Occam product. I am of the belief Occam will be a game-changing offering. Very cool.
GrantThornton’s Fair Lending in the digital age. June 2023.
BONUS: Coursera’s 17 Data Science Podcasts to Listen to in 2023
#1 – JP Morgan’s Making Sense podcast interviewed Man Group’s Chief Risk Officer Darrel Yawitch. April 2023.
My Take: Good high-level overview about how data flows through a very large, sophisticated institutional investors. Also a good listen as MAN Group launched their ArticDB platform to the market at last week’s Eagle Alpha conference.
Highlights (23-minute run time):
Minute 00:45 – introduction
Minute 01:45 – difference between systematic and discretionary when it comes to data use
Minute 03:30 – are alpha generation and risk Mgmt two sides of the same coin?
Minute 04:30 – identifying new risks in the market; balance between PMs and data practitioners
Minute 05:30 – explosion in the availability of data; NLP examples
Minute 08:00 – opportunity to monetize their Artic DB internal database (excel on steroids)
Minute 09:40 – where should the best central systems architecture be sitting? (buy side or sellside?)
Minute 11:00 – How much can be automated?
Minute 12:00 – Data watchdogs (observability)…how is this structured within MAN?
Minute 14:00 – impact of the explosion in trading volumes
Minute 16:00 – observation of current market trends
Minute 17:30 – impact of retail’s new access to more information
Minute 19:30 – the unknown unknowns
Minute 21:00 – thoughts on the future and increased use of data; data is the fuel for your business
Source: Adam Braff’s A field guide to the birds of AI. June 2023.
The people that can effectively stack these various talents will be well positioned to add value.
Source 2: Goodbrand’s Structure Your Marketing as a Funnel. June 2023.
Source: Inputs & Filters & the writings of Morgan Housel.
Related: Paying Attention
Bottom line, there is too much coming at us all day. Every day. We need to develop the ability to filter out the garbage and focus on the important things.
One piece of feedback I get from readers of this newsletter is that this is a good filter for the data-related articles & podcasts that we are bombarded with each week. Happy to be of service!
One suggestion: carefully select trusted filters.
Another suggestion: Be quick to discard. Read everything you can, but be quick to discard that which is not helpful/interesting. Use the question, “will I care about this in a year?” as a way of determining the value of what you are reading. If the answer is NO … then move on.
I continue to believe the ability to focus will be a 21st Century Superpower.