I know a ton of hedge funds are getting into alt data (Satellite imagery to predict sales at walmart, Clickstream data, credit card transaction dumps etc...) but do any Prop firms venture into this space? And if so, would any Prop Firms be interested in a weird acqui-hire from the sole owner of a company generating a ton of this type of exhaust data? The data is internet based, think browser clickstream data, essentially. I know from a previous role that usually these third party data vendors have a delay in delivering data. Sometimes once a month, other times weekly dumps to an FTP or s3 servers. Then analysis has to be performed and thrown into a model. The value add here would be real-time data. I know this is a long shot, and while I don't have experience with prop firms it seems like they focus solely on market only signals. But if there is anywhere to post this it would be here. Thank you.
The idea of alt data was popularised when that kid on Billions started looking at satellite data in the second season. Believe me, alt data is far, far from being the norm. Alt data is expensive, hard to analyse, time-consuming, and usually, doesn't event show the full picture- you might find yourself looking at satellite pictures of wallmart for a year, and make minuscule returns, compared to common sense economics, like looking at the purchasing power advance/decline in certain demographics. As I understand you're business orientated. A good idea would be to make alt data cheaper and easier to analyse.