We all are aware of profound limitation coming with Alternative Data:
- Low breadth (like sales receipts or Satellite imagery of parking lots only cover a handful of retail stocks)
- Tends to be the US focused while the world is increasingly global
Short history - Quality data sources are overused, and their predictive power is depleted
- Most importantly, Alternative Data is just another latest data point which investors need to properly contextualize not only through time but across asset classes:
- if there is a drop in cars parked at Home Depot, does it really mean that people buy less or is it a reflection of a holiday calendar shift?
- Does it mean a hot movie release that attracted consumers time away?
- Or cheap Euro and Canadian dollar shifted consumer time and travel outside of the US
- More importantly, if you believe that the spotted drop in traffic is fundamentally driven, how do you differentiate it being structural shift versus just a temporary blip
TenViz provides Data Tools providing statistically valid signals comparing global cross-asset flows. We still believe that in investing knowing more would not hurt but it is not the most important thing. That is reflected in our name TenViz (in Latin, “tenvis” stands for clear or straightforward).