Investment Firms Turn to Alt Data as Historical Models Fail

Investment teams are turning to alternative data to plug gaps and retrain models, after the unprecedented conditions of the coronavirus outbreak proved that historical models are irrelevant in such black swan scenarios, researchers say.

A recent study conducted by Refinitiv found that, compared to 2018, investment firms increased their use of alternative data to train AI and machine learning models. The most widely used alternative datasets were web scraping, social media, credit card data