Data exists for a purpose – to be used – and in modern capital markets, there is an increasing array of use cases to which information can be deployed. Chief among those is analytics, divining meaning and insight from the vast volumes of data that is available internally and from third parties.
Sourcing the right data, however, is one of the challenges that has been magnified by the advent of digitalised processes and especially with the arrival of artificial intelligence, which have expanded the universe of datasets and data types. As well, the delivery and storage of data for analytics has evolved, with modular, API-first architectures prioritising data readiness over platform transformation, enabling its utilisation at scale and low cost.
This article profiles 11 leading vendors providing innovative solutions that address these challenges. They offer specialised analytics, unique data sets and flexible delivery models to help capital markets professionals move past the friction of data management and focus on generating alpha.
AlphaSense’s AI-driven market intelligence platform aggregates and analyses unstructured data from millions of corporate filings, expert calls and broker research documents. It utilises proprietary natural language processing (NLP) specifically trained on financial vocabulary to surface buried insights, eliminating the manual, time-consuming process of reading through disparate qualitative sources, allowing fundamental researchers to quickly synthesise market sentiment and corporate strategy.
The data behemoth’s comprehensive real-time and historical financial data, analytics and trading tools provide a foundational infrastructure that offers depth in fixed-income pricing and cross-asset analytics. It seeks to solve the fragmentation of front-office workflows by providing a single, integrated environment for price discovery, risk analysis and trade execution.
BMLL’s harmonised, Level 3 order book data and analytics provide for highly granular, cloud-based processing of full-depth order book data for global equities and futures markets. The data, which is historically difficult and expensive to manage internally, enables quantitative researchers to analyse market microstructure and liquidity dynamics without the massive infrastructure burden of storing petabytes of tick data.
Academic and quantitative methodologies are applied to raw alternative data by ExtractAlpha, turning unstructured noise into predictive alpha signals and delivering actionable alternative data sets and quantitative signals for institutional investors. In this way the company seeks to bridge the gap between raw alternative data and actionable investment strategy, saving firms the years of R&D required to validate new data sources.
The financial data, analytical applications and open data solutions provider offers a modular platform that integrates proprietary and third-party data within a single, customisable interface. This is designed to enable portfolio managers to monitor risk, performance and fundamental data simultaneously without switching between disparate systems.
Koyfin’s platform allows mid-sized firms to compete with tier-one institutions without prohibitive software costs. It combines institutional-grade data with an intuitive, modern user interface at a fraction of the cost of legacy terminal providers. The visual, cloud-based platform is designed for fundamental research and democratises access to high-quality charting and financial analysis.
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG)
The massive scale and reliability required by global institutions that need consistent, normalised data across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory regimes is provided by LSEG’s extensive real-time data, pricing and reference data, which is pulled from across all major asset classes.
The credit ratings, risk analysis and financial data provider possesses a proprietary methodology for assessing credit risk and default probability, backed by decades of historical data. With that, risk managers can accurately quantify counterparty and credit risk in opaque or illiquid markets.
Nasdaq Data Link, which provides a centralised platform for accessing traditional, alternative, and real-time market data via cloud APIs, acts as a curated marketplace, heavily vetting alternative data sets before they are onboarded to ensure institutional quality. This reduces the time-to-market for quantitative funds looking to test and integrate new alternative data sets into their trading models.
PitchBook’s platform offers transparency into private market valuations, venture capital flows and M&A transactions. Its comprehensive data and research, covering the global private and public equity markets, enables investment banks and private equity firms to conduct due diligence on non-public entities.
S&P Global Market Intelligence
S&P Global provides essential data, analytics and workflow solutions for the global financial and corporate sectors. It is able to link disparate data sets – such as supply chain, ESG and fundamental financials – into a cohesive, cross-referenced database. This enables multi-asset analysts to perform holistic, interconnected risk assessments without manually mapping data from different vendors.
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