Alternative Data Weekly #166
Thanks for being here!
The Alternative Data Weekly is Powered by Vertical Knowledge.
Announcement(s):
Happy New Year Edition!
Vertical Knowledge will have a presence at two upcoming conferences:
Eagle Alpha’s January 18th data conference in NY
BattleFin’s January 24-26th data conference in Miami
Let me know if you plan to be in attendance.
VK was highlighted on CNBC: Beauty is the Beast of Retail.
Theme that emerged in this week’s email is … asking the right questions of the data is where the decision advantage is generated.
QUOTES
“It’s getting harder and harder to find true alternative data, because there’s so much access and availability to what was considered alternative data just a couple of years ago. So it feels pretty mainstream at this point – maybe the evidence of that is we don’t talk about alternative data that much anymore because it’s become so available.” Trader Magazine, Kevin McPartland, Head of Market Structure and Technology Research at Coalition Greenwich
News Articles
Podcasts
Cool Charts
Final Thoughts (2024)
#1 – Medhio published LLMs For Builders : Jargons, Theory & History. December 2023.
My Take: There is a ton of interesting takeaways in this article. Of most interest to me is the importance of prompt engineering (asking good questions). Another is the 4 steps in the lifecycle of a model.
Data collections and preparation: Gathering and processing relevant data to ensure it is clean, representative, and in a format suitable for training the model.
Training: Feeding vast and diverse text datasets into the LLM to learn complex language structures, nuances, and contextual relationships, enabling it to understand and generate human-like text.
Fine-tuning: After initial training, the model is fine-tuned with more specific datasets or for particular tasks. This could involve training on specialized topics or styles to enhance performance in certain areas.
Inference: applying the trained LLM to interpret, generate, or respond to new text inputs.
#3 – Sven Balnojan published How Airbnb Turned Itself Into A Data-Driven Company Through Business Intelligence. December 2023.
My Take: Decision making goes far beyond “just” data. The author tells us the story of Airbnb and how they incorporated data in their decision making process from the very early stages of the company. This shows the importance of having the right goals, asking the right questions, and iterating throughout.
BONUS: Outlook 2024: Mike Liscombe, Nasdaq. December 2023. “The highlight of the year was the proliferation of the alt data industry. Products that have been successful in markets like the U.S. are now growing internationally.”
What else I am reading:
Dan Entrup’s Its Pronounced Data
CDO Magazine’s Data Leaders 100 — The Leading Influencers North America List 2023.
Understanding AI published New data shows Waymo crashes a lot less than human drivers. December 2023.
Supervised published Will AI finally take real-time data mainstream?. December 2023.
Rebellion Research’s 2023 Research Papers of the Year. December 2023.
Matt Ober’s Thoughts Going Into 2024. December 2023.
Source: The Data Chief published an interview with Benn Stancil How to Organize Modern Data and Analytics Teams. September 2023.
My Take: Most interesting for me in this conversation is the passion for data and analytics developed through interest in baseball and macro-economics (two of my favorites). In the end, Benn tells us data can be fun when answer interesting questions (again that them of asking good questions).
Highlights (61-minute run time):
Minute 02:00 – Interview starts
Minute 03:45 – Benn Stancil’s background (DC-based think tank, then onto the tech startup world)
Minute 08:00 – Yammer background & data team
Minute 11:00 – Ideal operating state for data teams
Minute 14:30 – Being a partner to end user, not just producing data dashboards
Minute 16:00 – Is the issue “tech debt” or “skills & mindset”; monitor level of ambition is key
Minute 22:00 – Importance of data culture, incentives, centralized vs decentralized
Minute 27:00 – Agility & trust
Minute 34:00 – Data engineering is still important, just prepping for machine rather than analyst
Minute 39:00 – Importance of all data leaders getting a handle on basic prompt engineering
Minute 46:00 – Starting Mode & then it was acquired by ThoughtSpot
Minute 53:00 – Mode building a BI tool and ThoughtSpot reaching out (synergies)
Minute 55:00 – What was Ben most interested in when leaving college; favorite activity; interview wraps up
BONUS: Let’s Talk Data by NetApp published How Data Shapes Our World. September 2023 (focus on data bias).
Source: Mark Trowbridge from Maiden Century published With Alternative Data, More is Better. December 2023.
Here comes 2024.
Some quick predictions:
We will see an increase in consolidation among data vendors.
AI will see “invisible progress” as new products are created that are valuable, but the end users will not even think of them as AI products … just products.
Data quality will be the hot area & there will be some big acquisitions.
VK Trends will be the hottest new data product in the market.
Data licensing issues will be forefront as perhaps new commercials models are developed to compensate content creators (NYT).
Of course, the entire calendar year will be dominated by the noise around the US presidential election.
Sports Predictions:
Browns - 49ers in Super Bowl (49ers win)
Braves - Yankees in World Series (Yankees win)
Nuggets - 76ers in NBA Championship (Nuggets win)
Avs - Hurricanes in Stanley Cup (Avs win)
Washington - Alabama in NCAA Football (Washington wins)
BU - Quinnipiac in NCAA Hockey Championship (BU wins)