Automated Agent Surveillance of Web Data Delivers Unique Insights for Buy-Side Trading Decisions

Sell-side and independent research provide just a starting point for the buy-side. Finding unique and proprietary information has become more and more difficult. The Web is a gold mine of buried information nuggets. Buy-side professionals are challenged with finding the time to dig out and organize the relevant data. How can Connotate’s Agent Community GEN2 give buy-side professionals an advantage in this new environment? Over the last several months Connotate Agents have been building Fundamental Trends that are providing key insights for trading, including:   

• Falling Revenue – the paid job postings being made on major web portals and job sites are being monitored as a indicator of revenue. Several hundred data points are being gathered daily to build a time series perspective. One of the major sites, which has M&A discussions swirling around its parent, shows a 15% decline in job postings during the time period while one of its competitors shows a 4% growth and another competitor shows a 72% increase in job postings.    
• Pressure on a Sector – several major travel websites have shown a decline in web traffic. The information contributed to at least one short trade decision for the website with the largest decline in traffic.    
• Hiring - the job postings of the largest employers in the US (and other regions) are being monitored as an indicator of corporate performance. Thousands of data points are being collected on a daily basis to build a time series perspective. One company removed hundreds of job postings, approximately 10%, from its website several days before announcing weak earnings. Another firm removed 200 jobs (also approximately 10% of its total jobs available) just before it announced plans to shed $400b in assets. On the other hand, Connotate’s Agents report an increase of over 25% for a tech company’s job postings, consistent with a strong quarterly report from the company.    

Click on the chart below to enlarge the image and see where Agent results show dips in job postings. 

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under General, Intelligent Agent Technology, Agent Applications in Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.