Inside Market Data & Inside Reference Data Awards 2019

Curiosity—A Winning Trait

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but in business it’s a characteristic that can grant you nine lives.

In fact, it’s a key ingredient to many of the winning recipes that grace the Inside Market Data & Inside Reference Data Awards each year. If not for curious minds asking “How could this be done better?” or “Why does the industry do things that way?”, development of new products and services would stagnate. If people weren’t constantly seeking better ways of doing things, what impetus would there be to drive the industry forward?

If latency-sensitive traders hadn’t wondered whether there were better routes and, ultimately, whether wireless could support data and trading traffic, would we still have the same exciting developments around low-latency data transmission that won Pico Quantitative Trading the Best Low-Latency Data/Technology Provider award? Or if researchers hadn’t wondered whether datasets outside the financial realm could be indicators of stock price movements, would Quandl (winner, Best Alternative Data Provider), FactSet (winner, Best Alternative Data Initiative) and others be blazing trails in
the alternative data field?

And, if he hadn’t wondered whether there was a better way to collect and analyze information about who was using what products, and how competitors ranked against each other for product development purposes at Thomson Financial, this year’s Hall of Fame inductee, Douglas Taylor, might never have set up Burton-Taylor International Consulting and authored a range of market share and industry spend reports.

Without curiosity, this otherwise vibrant, competitive and innovative industry would be a lot more boring, and there’d be far fewer winners.

Stay curious, my friends.

Max Bowie, Editor-at-Large, WatersTechnology