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As we head into prime season for shareholder meetings, investors are taking notice that the number of meetings conducted by publicly traded companies is on the rise. Corporate events like shareholder meetings and changes to those events can cause volatility, which makes accurate and timely knowledge of events extremely important for investors. By keeping track of movement around shareholder meetings alongside other events such as earnings releases, traders can adjust their trading strategies as needed.

Alternative data can take on different meanings to investors so let’s start with a general definition: “alt” data refers to non-traditional or unique information not previously known or available to financial markets. 

On March 14, 2019, data partner Lucena Research co-hosted a panel discussion with Wall Street Horizon. The event “Finding Tradable Signals in Alt Data” featured the following panel:

The scheduling of corporate events such as earnings release dates can point to significant, untapped sources of alpha, as firm-initiated revisions to expected earnings announcement dates are strong predictors of firms’ upcoming earnings news.

While we have seen a dramatic rise of virtual shareholder meetings over the past few years, there has also been an increase of in-person attendance at investor conferences putting the competing ‘virtual vs. human’ views at odds. We take a closer look, below.

A recent article from CNBC shows that asset managers and hedge funds are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay for analyst research reports that they once relied on so heavily. In fact, data shows a 25% decrease from client spend on reports compared to a year earlier.  While the importance and need for in-depth research and insight is by no means diminishing, the means in which traders are consuming and obtaining analyst intelligence is changing in a somewhat surprising way.

Looking for accurate, comprehensive event data to stay on top of volatility? Wall Street Horizon has the unique tools and the research to support the importance of corporate events relative to volatility.