A round-up of some activities and free resources during the coronavirus crisis
State Street frees unstructured retail and consumer data to central banks
State Street announced that it will offer its State Street PriceStats Series, a comprehensive suite of indicators to monitor trends in retailer pricing and consumer demand in 22 countries, to central banks around the world at no cost. The announcement comes following an influx of inquiries from central banks as they seek to mitigate the negative economic effects of the pandemic.
Quant models: the new footsoldiers in the fight against covid-19
Pandemic response requires accurate decision making in the absence of high quality data. Financial data scientists are used to deriving fast and actionable insights from sparse and noisy data. In this crisis, we do not have the luxury to wait for more data as more data means more suffering.
In a recent webinar, Rotella Qdeck, Atlas Ridge Capital, and Battle of the Quants discussed: understanding the modeling and practical challenges in COVID-19 emergency response; understand the general parameters of the disease and specific factors in various locations; applying predictive models to forecast the spread of COVID-19 in multiple locations; modeling the macroeconomic impact of this pandemic.
There was a call for interested practitioners to join the network. More information at “the.covid.network@gmail.com”
EdgeVerve offers free bots for business critical functions during pandemic
EdgeVerve (an Infosys subsidiary) are making FREE AssistEdge Digital Workers (bots that work 24×7) to assist enterprises in managing the disruption caused in business critical functions due to COVID-19 pandemic. Case studies in the public domain include a bank in the Middle East and a financial services provider in India.
The free resources include: 10 free bots until the end of September 2020; free access to train the bots for business requirements; free access to 2 online train the trainer sessions; a limited set of free consulting hours, delivered virtually to teams.
Alt-data coalition formed to support covid-19 knowledge sharing and policymaking
Knoema, the provider of an end-to-end data and knowledge management platform and one of the largest global repositories of public data, is partnering with members of the alternative data community to provide the general public, media outlets, and policy makers with free data resources, visualizations and dashboards related to COVID-19.
The founding coalition of alternative data providers includes: Advan (geolocation data), Apptopia (mobile app performance metrics), Cognovi Labs (AI-powered emotion analytics), Earnest Research (consumer analytics), M Science (consumer, industrials, tech, media and telecom), MedMine (medical devices and hospital supplies procurement data), Prosper Insights & Analytics (consumer confidence, spending and retail) and SimilarWeb (digital data).
Public data sources related to COVID-19 specifically include: The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and the COVID Tracking Project.
Triad Securities will donate trading commissions to help with COVID-19 relief efforts
Triad Securities, a full-service, agency-only brokerage firm, announced that it is holding the Triad Cares Trading Day on April 20th benefiting COVID-19 relief efforts, with 100% of Triad’s trading commissions to be donated to a group of four leading charities that provide services to those impacted by the coronavirus crisis in the Greater New York City area.
The local causes and charities that will receive donations include: NYC Health & Hospitals – provides supplies to city hospital front-line workers; Healthcare Heroes – supports the physical and emotional wellbeing of healthcare workers who are on the front lines; Meals on Wheels – delivers meals to the home-bound elderly in NYC; and City Harvest – is committed to rescuing and delivering food for 2.5 million New Yorkers.