About Alternative Economics

Who am I

Hi, my name is Qayyum - most people call me ‘Q’. In short - I am a finance guy who learned how to code. After starting my career in portfolio management, I started programming and ended up founding a few companies focused on the frontier of finance - always with a focus on new and exciting data sources.

This newsletter is focused on looking at global macro, through an alternative data lens - to paint a picture of where the world is going, by uncovering signals that can lend fresh insights that can help us think differently.

What is alternative data ?

Alternative (or big) data is physical, unstructured (text) or non-financial data generated by the technologies of our everyday lives ― review sites, news and media, satellite imagery, sensors, to name just a few. When aggregated and analyzed in the right way, alternative data can provide valuable insights as part of a micro or macro analysis for companies, countries and pretty much anything you can think of.

Why this, why now?

As the world changes beneath our feet, we need more than traditional sources of information to make sense of the investing world.

When markets are moving at a furious pace, as they have been since the start of the Coronavirus earlier last year - it has seemed impossible to get a clear, up to date picture on what is happening.

During such times, official data is often slow and noisy - making it difficult to develop a full picture of what is really going on.

Against this landscape, alternative data takes on new importance in identifying emerging, economic and market trends that traditionally can be slow or impossible to efficiently contextualize.

Subscribe to Alternative Economics

Where alternative data meets global macro

People

Finance guy who learned how to code. Where capital markets meet alternative data.