Active managers who want to find and use good research and trading ideas quickly have a new arrow in their quiver to help them do both. Toronto-based software vendor First Coverage wants to help them manage and evaluate the avalanche of daily sellside research they receive so the information can be applied to trading strategies immediately.
First Coverage 2.0-the firm’s updated Web-based software platform-does this by aggregating, filtering and evaluating incoming research, trade ideas and market information in real-time on buyside desktops.
“The purpose of enhancements-including extensions such as raw data feeds-is to increase the ability of portfolio managers to quickly and efficiently use sellside information to generate higher returns,” said Randy Cass, the firm’s chief executive.
First Coverage invites all of a buyside firm’s institutional sales coverage onto its platform, Cass said. The data, ideas and information funneled through First Coverage’s platform can then be standardized, evaluated and made accessible.
First Coverage can measure whether an idea made or lost money, as well as how successful, in aggregate, an analyst’s ideas are compared to his sector peers. One feature lets quants and hedge fund managers incorporate large amounts of formerly unstructured data directly, pre-tagged, into their investment strategies, internal algorithmic trading platforms and proprietary models.
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