Financial market data and infrastructure global provider Refinitiv, announced its discovery in its ‘A New Dimension of Data – Building an Open and Trustworthy Alternative Data Ecosystem’ report, partnering with Open Data Institute (ODI).
It is currently challenging to understand the magnitude of available information and investment managers, traders and investors are charged with finding the right data and making sense of it. Unstructured information and need for trusted sources further complicate the process.
Refinitv’s report on alternative data is based on thousands of alternative data sources, hundreds of case studies and millions in global spend. The report found that there is growing interest in alternative data sector. The alternative data market, however, is a fraction of the multibillion-dollar market for access to stock market and other financial data and as such is still in the early stages of governance and regulation.
The alternative data report addresses key concerns for understanding and standardizing the alternative data such as: what is it; how it is accessed, used and shared; ethical and legal factors; improving the access; next steps.
Austin Burkett, Global Head of Quants and Feeds, Refinitiv, stated:
Austin Burkett
The rise and success of quantitative analysis and investing using alternative data has taken the broader financial community to an inflection point when it comes to understanding, sourcing and applying these data sets to add greater insight and investment value. At Refinitiv, we believe that alternative data ought to be standardized and where possible, normalized in order to improve data quality and reliability to better serve clients with the highest ethical and legal considerations.
Jeni Tennison, CEO of the ODI, commented:
Working in collaboration with Refinitiv on this Alternative Data report has allowed us to investigate an emerging data ecosystem: data used by investors to help evaluate a company or investment that comes from new and unique sources. There is a market for this. For example, some companies are analysing real-time sentiment data, in the form of positive or negative social media posts and making predictions on company performance before any traditional data is released from the company. However, we have found that the ecosystem is struggling from a lack of standards and transparency, creating issues around privacy, intellectual property, and trust.
Tennison continued:
Jeni Tennison
In order to build an open and trustworthy alternative data ecosystem the ethical, technical and practical issues need to be addressed. In the report we highlight tools such as our ‘Open Standards for Data’ handbook, which can help drive adoption of standards, and our Data Ethics Canvas, which can help organisations identify and make decisions about potential ethical issues.
Experienced writer and journalist, working in the global online trading sector, Steffy is the Editor of LeapRate. She has previous experience as a copywriter and has been with the company since January 2020. Steffy has a British and American Studies degree from St. Kliment Ochridski University in Sofia.
