State Street unveils Quantextual Idea Lab for investment research
Anyone else humming the ‘Blue Peter’ theme?
State Street has launched its Quantextual Idea Lab, a hybrid of machine learning and human knowledge, for improved investment research.
According to the firm, investment professionals are inundated with research reports from the sell side, the buy side and academia. It reckons financial research teams can produce enough content to consume 24 reams or 12,000 sheets of paper per day. Holy sheeeeeeet!
Now, State Street Global Exchange, State Street’s data and analytics business, has unveiled Quantextual Idea Lab that uses machine learning algorithms to consume research reports, tag them by investment themes and assets as well as suggest new, relevant materials based on the end-user’s specific needs, preferences and observed reading behaviour.
The solution then overlays the experience and market knowledge of Quantextual’s own research team to “continuously improve the algorithms’ performance and accuracy”.
Stephen Lawrence, head of Quantextual research, State Street Global Exchange, says: “With limited time investors may overlook or delete important research insights. Those who can make sense of large amounts of information quickly will front run peers.”
The lab includes the following features:
- Automated document classification;
- “Human-curated content and conclusions created from the research which preserves their nuanced academic or economic tone”;
- Social collaboration tools allowing users to annotate research reports and share them with colleagues.
State Street offers financial services to institutional investors including servicing, management and research and trading. It has $31 trillion in assets under custody and administration and over $2.61 trillion in assets under management as of 30 June 2017. State Street says it operates globally in more than 100 geographic markets.
