Professors Announce a Paper and an NYU Course Revealing Intimate Details of the Alternative Data Industry

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Sep 09, 2021, 08:17 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Professors Petter Kolm and Gene Ekster have published a divulging paper on Alternative Data in the peer-reviewed Journal of Financial Data Science (JFDS). The paper unveils lesser-known industry details, including commercial incentives of the participants, dataset valuation, and technology used to generate returns by institutional investors. The article offers practical advice on common technical problems, including entity recognition and bias reduction.

"Alternative data is ultimately creating value for pension funds and endowments by offering alternative sources of truth, not just what the companies want professional investors to see," said Gene Ekster, CEO of AltDG and one of the paper's authors.

In conjunction with publishing the paper, Mr. Ekster will teach a master's level course on alternative data to students of the 2021 NYU Courant Master of Science Program in Mathematics in Finance, which Dr. Kolm directs. "Alternative data is the future of investment management; hopefully, the entity mapping technology created by the team at AltDG and the talent created by the class at NYU will go a long way to establishing alternative data as a mainstream practice, not just a niche for generating returns," said Mr. Ekster.

Gene Ekster is an adjunct professor at NYU, where he teaches a course on alternative data in finance. He is also the CEO of AltDG, an alternative data software company. Previously, he managed the alternative data team at Point72 Asset Management and worked in alternative-data roles at Balyasny Asset Management, Lone Pine, 1010 Data, and Majestic Research. Gene is a board member of IDSO (a compliance organization), Eagle Alpha, Ottoquant, and Super Signal Capital. He holds a degree in Artificial Intelligence from U.C. Berkeley, an MBA from Cornell University, and is a CFA charter holder.

Dr. Petter Kolm is a Professor and the Director of the M.S. in Mathematics in Finance program at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University. Prior to NYU, Dr. Kolm worked in the Quantitative Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. He co-authored the books Financial Modeling of the Equity Market: From CAPM to Cointegration (Wiley, 2006), Trends in Quantitative Finance (CFA Research Institute, 2006), Robust Portfolio Management and Optimization (Wiley, 2007), and Quantitative Equity Investing: Techniques and Strategies (Wiley, 2010). He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University, an M.Phil. in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, and an M.S. in mathematics from ETH Zurich. Dr. Kolm is a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Portfolio Analysis and Management (IJPAM), Journal of Investment Strategies (JoIS), Journal of Portfolio Management (JPM), and Journal of Financial Data Science (JFDS).

Contact:
Gene Ekster
5109677977
[email protected]
https://jfds.pm-research.com/content/early/2021/09/03/jfds.2021.1.073

SOURCE AltDG