Alternative data
Waters Wrap: The changing face of news (And the changing face of office design)
Anthony looks at how news organizations and alternative data providers need to change their business models as ‘context’ takes on greater importance. Additionally, he gives his thoughts on open floor plans in a post-Covid world.
UK watchdogs run into security fears
Data security and innovation are always going to be in tension. A new plan to improve regulatory reporting might find itself facing worries over security, Jo says.
Data is boring, right? A look at some innovative market data projects underway
While market data departments are rarely highlighted when it comes to innovation, Max says that doesn’t mean there aren’t disruptive tech projects underway.
This Week: Refinitiv, State Street, FlexTrade, FactSet/Microsoft, Cboe, and more
A summary of some of the past week’s financial technology news.
Financial markets and herd mentalities
Support for the little guys (and girls!) of retail investing has been encouraging to witness, but when it comes to GameStop, Wei-Shen wonders what the bigger picture shows.
Advanced analytics ripe for no-code, low-code tools to enter the field
Jo predicts we will see a rise in no-code or low-code tools in the analytics space, but some barriers to scale remain.
PanAgora’s CIO & head of sustainable investing explain firm’s ESG framework, best practices
Waters Wavelength Podcast Interview Series: PanAgora’s George Mussalli and Mike Chen hit on topics including building predictive models using point-in-time data, and balancing ESG portfolios.
Waters Wrap: Dash Financial gets nabbed by Ion (And monetizing data)
Ion Group has acquired Dash Financial. Whether or not this ends up being a good marriage will come down to the people making the tech platforms, Anthony says.
JP Morgan AM develops AI quant tool that uses mind maps to build thematic funds
ThemeBot uses textual relevance and revenue attribution to construct a list of stocks, which is then verified by JPMAM’s active equity analysts.
Waters Wrap: The New World of ESG (And GameStop & Interop)
While the Biden administration is already targeting environmental issues with early executive orders, Anthony says that it’s financial giants that will have the greatest effect on ESG investing in the near-term.
Data providers target data deficiencies in muni bonds market
Companies like Ice are looking at ways to help municipal bond investors gain transparency into a historically opaque market.
This Week: Refinitiv ESG; Nikko/GoldenSource; Causality Link/Eagle Alpha; Crux & more
A summary of some of the past week's financial technology news.
BlackRock looks to predictive ESG data, rather than point-in-time
Mary-Catherine Lader says that the asset manager is building out new modeling tools to help users better understand how the decisions a company makes today can affect their performance in the future.
State Street focuses on 6 data vendors for ESG analysis
State Street’s Chris Berry explains how the asset servicer winnowed 60 ESG data providers down to six, and why this strategy has proved to be effective.
Goldman taps alt data for economic forecasts during pandemic
Economists at the bank leveraged a combination of public and third-party data to make conclusions about the future during uncertain times.
US pension fund teams up with academics to cut through ESG fog
Pension Reserves Investment Management and MIT’s business school are looking to improve ESG data and to reflect all investors’ views.
Vendors Continue to Move Products, Services to the Cloud: Some Examples
Last year, most (if not all) financial technology providers either completed or started major projects that involved moving their products and services to the cloud. WatersTechnology looks at 15 of the more interesting cloud-migration initiatives from…
FactSet, Snowflake Take Aim at Financial Data Mapping Challenges
FactSet’s mapping service, Concordance, can be used on its own or with Snowflake’s cloud, enabling users to apply the offering to other datasets in Snowflake’s ecosystem.
Quants Find New Ways to Identify Inventive Companies
Buy-side firms are using patent and other types of data to identify trailblazer companies from phonies.
Waters Wrap: App Interop in 2020 (And Tony’s Fave Stories From Last Year)
Anthony takes a look at some of the major projects that involved application interoperability from last year. The list includes feats by Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Barclays, ICE, State Street, Refinitiv, and FactSet.
How Will Covid Lessons Reshape Financial Tech in 2021?
As 2020 comes to a close, Anthony looks at how firms have adjusted their short- and long-term plans in the face of the coronavirus, focusing on office space, innovation, alt data, and mental health.
Machine Learning in the Capital Markets 2020: ML Spreads During Pandemic
WatersTechnology looks at how 10 different firms are embedding machine learning algorithms into their platforms and tools.
Asia at the Forefront of Innovation—A Look at Tech Projects in the Region
WatersTechnology looks at some of the major projects coming out of Asia that are leading the way for firms around the globe.
The ABCs of NLP: How Trading Firms Used NLP to Navigate 2020
This year, natural language processing came to the fore in capital markets, helping firms of all kinds parse huge, unstructured datasets.