Big Data, Big Profits? Find The Bottom Line Through Unique Datasets

The slow death of conventional research. That was the theme of the big data panel discussion at the 2016 Benzinga Fintech Awards.

"Market research is moving away from panel research and into social intelligence," said Chris Camillo, CEO and founder of TickerTags. He noted there are billions of conversations happening every day — think WhatsApp, Messenger and of course, Twitter Inc TWTR — and everything goes viral in an instant. This leaves room for a new kind of analyst and investor to bloom.

"The opportunity is there and relatively untapped and under appreciated," said Matthew Granade, chief market intelligence officer at Point72.

Camillo said these big data sets are highly interpretable. "The winner isn't the firm that gets data first, but the firm/investor that can best interpret data. Over the next five years, we'll see the rise of this social contextual analyst research."

Foursquare, for example, has been cheered for accurately predicting Apple Inc. AAPL iPhone sales using its unique data.

Yin Luo, managing director and head of quantitative strategy at ,strong>Deutsche Bank AG (USA) DB, mentioned how unstructured data like this can take a lot of time to process and find for the typical analyst. He said this type of data is mostly complementary information, and not something to solely analyse when making trades or investments.

Stay tuned for more updates throughout the day. Follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #BZAwards.