FactSet and Quantopian, a crowd sourced asset manager and provider of an open source quantitative finance platform, have formed a strategic relationship to deliver Quantopian Enterprise, a data analysis solution that allows quants to research, test and simulate how investment algorithms will perform in the real world. To support this, the relationship combines Quantopian’s open source workflow for quants with data from Open:FactSet Marketplace.
Quantopian has a community of over 195,000 members worldwide using its free, open source quant workflow to develop and test trading strategies. The environment is Python based and includes a point-in-time database and multi-factor risk platform to support development of algo trading strategies and portfolio optimisation.
Working with FactSet, Quantopian will continue to support its free platform with data made available by FactSet but delayed on average by about a year for each dataset. Quantopian Enterprise, will be sold as a bundle of the Quantopian workflow software and up to date data from Open:FactSet Marketplace. The enterprise solution will be marketed jointly, supported by FactSet and priced on a seat-based subscription model.
Rich Newman, senior vice president and global head of Content and Technology Solutions at FactSet, says quant trading is shifting towards data science, computer power and alternative data to generate alpha. There is also a shift towards more programming and creative thinking, which FactSet has not focused on in the past. The recently released Open:FactSet Marketplace moves the company further into alternative data with 25 data feeds, including FactSet’s core content as well as alternative datasets such as satellite, sentiment, and environmental, social, and governance data from third-party providers.
On FactSet’s relationship with Quantopian, Newman notes: “FactSet lacked a robust quantitative data science environment and Quantopian lacked content, distribution and scale to develop a commercial model and offer support. The companies’ capabilities complement each other well and allow FactSet to target programmers.”
John Fawcett, founder and CEO at Quantopian, describes the relationship as a landmark deal for the company that will provide quants with the tools, data and environment they need to help reshape how data is used in the investment industry. He says: “We have had many requests to buy our software for enterprise use but needed more data to come to market. For a small independent fintech it was also difficult to build up sales, distribution and support. The partnership with FactSet addresses all the problems around going to market and provides everything a quant needs.”
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