Neil Chapman, CEO of Exabel
2021 saw various firsts for alternative data. The $1.6bn flotation of SimilarWeb evidenced the emergence of the first ‘unicorn’ alternative data provider, with Yipit Data’s capital raise subsequently resulting in a second unicorn valuation. On the regulatory side, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its first fine against an alternative data provider, charging App Annie with securities fraud. Meanwhile alternative data adoption continued apace following its breakout year of 2020, in which investors had found alt data’s often higher frequency to be particularly valuable amidst such unprecedented uncertainty. This year the London Stock Exchange Group published research showing that in 2021, of all the financial services firms that it contacted, only 1% are not using alternative data at all; in 2018 that number was still up at 30%.
Looking ahead into 2022, it is now possible to make some predictions around what awaits the ever-growing community of alternative data stakeholders. 2022 will be the year when barriers to usage of alternative data will truly begin to come down:
Tooling solutions have their moment
Alternative data’s history is rooted in a form of elitism. For much of its early development, only the most sophisticated hedge funds had access to the cutting edge technology and brainpower required to successfully extract value from alternative data. As the sector matures this truth is changing; as the knowledge spreads out of the hedge funds so too do the technical capabilities, increasingly in the shape of external software platforms that allow practitioners to extract value from alternative data. Such platforms can bring an alt data capability to new users of all shapes and sizes, from non-data savvy investment teams at larger long-only investment funds to smaller family offices that have previously had the knowledge and the appetite to make the most of alt data, but had lacked the technological opportunity. This externalization trend could ultimately touch the sophisticated funds that first conceived the use of alternative data, since growing efficiencies could make these external platforms more competitive than that which is possible within a single fund.
The SEC swings into action
As mentioned, the SEC issued its first fine to an alternative data provider in 2021, finding App Annie guilty of securities fraud. This was not the precedent-setting example that the market has long been anticipating however. For several years, legal advisers have been warning hedge funds and alternative data providers that the SEC might wade into the sector and punish a practitioner that was using alternative data in an as-yet unspecified manner deemed by the regulator to be ‘too loose’. In the case of App Annie, the regulator found the app data provider to be guilty of behaviour that would be reprehensible in any sector, not related to alternative data specifically. What the App Annie judgement demonstrates is the fact that alternative data is now firmly embedded on the SEC’s radar, so there may well be further regulatory activity in 2022.
Buyside personnel moving into product
2021 has seen a growing trend for buyside personnel taking their hard-earned skills onto the product side. This could be a sign that strong venture capital flows have finally convinced these asset managers that the time is ripe for a more entrepreneurial project with high growth potential, or it could be a signal that the market is moving towards the externalization trend mentioned above, or both. Either way, it is a trend that looks likely to continue in 2022.
The rise of Synthetic Data
Synthetic data, or data that has been manufactured or created artificially for a specific purpose, is coming increasingly into vogue in data science circles, and alternative data is no different. Hedge funds have long used data pertaining to private individuals, in almost all cases for uses in which personal identifiers are irrelevant to the value. With public and regulatory scrutiny increasing around privacy, the benefits of synthetic data in which personal identifiers are scrambled and obfuscated are becoming increasingly obvious. Other uses of synthetic data, such as for generating a larger dataset for model training, or using tweaked datasets for scenario-planning, might also have potential futures in the alternative data world as the techniques are being perfected more widely.
The march of the retail investor
The Gamestop affair back in January 2021 announced the return to the limelight of an established but sometimes forgotten player – the retail investor. The year turned out to be an influential one for the man on the street, who drove valuations both up and down, meaning an investor not paying attention to the chatter could easily find themselves burned. In 2022 this trend is likely to continue and alternative data offers opportunities both to institutional investors seeking to track what retail investors are investing in in real time, and increasingly opportunities for retail investors themselves to make more informed decisions with platforms tailored for their use.
Expansion into Europe
Alternative data originated in the United States, which is still the sector’s hinterland. In recent years inroads have been made in Asia, but the next push looks likely to be taking place in Europe. Increasing local availability of credit card and other data types, taken along with the developed nature of European markets, has made Europe a geography ripe for alternative data to increase its influence. Language and privacy regulation hurdles still exist though, and the market will need to continue to find solutions that negate these hindrances.
New forms of NLP
Natural language processing has been in use since the earliest forms of alternative data were emerging in this millennium’s first decade. Textual analysis has spread from creating sentiment gauges to track social media such as Twitter, and into the cat-and-mouse contest between hedge funds trying to extract extra meaning from earnings calls and investor relations executives attempting to keep corporate communication as neutral as possible. In 2022 a new battleground is being mapped around audio analysis, with alternative data emerging around the tone and cadence of corporate communicators, with the aim being to mine this data and reveal more than the speaker is intending.
