AFTAs 2019: Best Data Management Initiative—Balyasny Asset Management

Winning the Best Data Management Initiative with its Antenna tool has been a two-year labor of love for Balyasny Asset Management’s Data Intelligence Group, headed by chief data officer Carson Boneck.

Balyasny rolled out Antenna at the start of 2018 as a way to automatically test alternative datasets to see if they would actually deliver alpha—or at least the level of alpha claimed by the supplier—without portfolio managers having to spend time and money on acquiring and evaluating them in