This book introduces a state-of-art approach in evaluating portfolio management and risk based on artificial intelligence and alternative data. The book covers a textual analysis of news and social media, information extraction from GPS and IoTs data, and risk predictions based on small transaction data, etc. The book summarizes and introduces the advancement in each area and highlights the machine learning and deep learning techniques utilized to achieve the goals. As a complement, it also illustrates examples on how to leverage the python package to visualize and analyze the alternative datasets, and will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of risk evaluation, risk management, data, AI, and financial innovation.

This book focuses on the alternative techniques and data leveraged for credit risk, describing and analysing the array of methodological approaches for the usage of techniques and/or alternative data for regulatory and managerial rating models. During the last decade the increase in computational capacity, the consolidation of new methodologies to elaborate data and the availability of new information related to individuals and organizations, aided by the widespread usage of internet, set the stage for the development and application of artificial intelligence techniques in enterprises in general and financial institutions in particular. In the banking world, its application is even more relevant, thanks to the use of larger and larger data sets for credit risk modelling. The evaluation of credit risk has largely been based on client data modelling; such techniques (linear regression, logistic regression, decision trees, etc.) and data sets (financial, behavioural, sociologic, geographic, sectoral, etc.) are referred to as “traditional” and have been the de facto standards in the banking industry. The incoming challenge for credit risk managers is now to find ways to leverage the new AI toolbox on new (unconventional) data to enhance the models’ predictive power, without neglecting problems due to results’ interpretability while recognizing ethical dilemmas. Contributors are university researchers, risk managers operating in banks and other financial intermediaries and consultants. The topic is a major one for the financial industry, and this is one of the first works offering relevant case studies alongside practical problems and solutions.

A class of highly mathematical algorithms works with three-dimensional (3D) data known as graphs. Our research challenge focuses on applying these algorithms to solve more complex problems with financial data, which tend to be in higher dimensions (easily over 100), based on probability distributions, with time subscripts and jumps. The 3D research analogy is to train a navigation algorithm when the way-finding coordinates and obstacles such as buildings change dynamically and are expressed in higher dimensions with jumps.Our short title 'ia≠ai' symbolizes how investment analytics is not a simplistic reapplication of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques proven in engineering. This book presents best-of-class sophisticated techniques available today to solve high dimensional problems with properties that go deeper than what is required to solve customary problems in engineering today.Dr Bernard Lee is the Founder and CEO of HedgeSPA, which stands for Sophisticated Predictive Analytics for Hedge Funds and Institutions. Previously, he was a managing director in the Portfolio Management Group of BlackRock in New York City as well as a finance professor who has taught and guest-lectured at a number of top universities globally.Related Link(s)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data have their thumbprints all over the modern asset management firm. Like detectives investigating a crime, the practitioner contributors to this book put the latest data science techniques under the microscope. And like any good detective story, much of what is unveiled is at the same time surprising and hiding in plain sight. Each chapter takes you on a well-guided tour of the development and application of specific AI and big data techniques and brings you up to the minute on how they are being used by asset managers. Given the diverse backgrounds and affiliations of our authors, this book is the perfect companion to start, refine, or plan the next phase of your data science journey.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has grown in presence in asset management and has revolutionized the sector in many ways. It has improved portfolio management, trading, and risk management practices by increasing efficiency, accuracy, and compliance. In particular, AI techniques help construct portfolios based on more accurate risk and return forecasts and more complex constraints. Trading algorithms use AI to devise novel trading signals and execute trades with lower transaction costs. AI also improves risk modeling and forecasting by generating insights from new data sources. Finally, robo-advisors owe a large part of their success to AI techniques. Yet the use of AI can also create new risks and challenges, such as those resulting from model opacity, complexity, and reliance on data integrity.

Handbook of Alternative Data in Finance, Volume I motivates and challenges the reader to explore and apply Alternative Data in finance. The book provides a robust and in-depth overview of Alternative Data, including its definition, characteristics, difference from conventional data, categories of Alternative Data, Alternative Data providers, and more. The book also offers a rigorous and detailed exploration of process, application and delivery that should be practically useful to researchers and practitioners alike. Features Includes cutting edge applications in machine learning, fintech, and more Suitable for professional quantitative analysts, and as a resource for postgraduates and researchers in financial mathematics Features chapters from many leading researchers and practitioners

Leverage machine learning to design and back-test automated trading strategies for real-world markets using pandas, TA-Lib, scikit-learn, LightGBM, SpaCy, Gensim, TensorFlow 2, Zipline, backtrader, Alphalens, and pyfolio. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in the PDF format. Key FeaturesDesign, train, and evaluate machine learning algorithms that underpin automated trading strategiesCreate a research and strategy development process to apply predictive modeling to trading decisionsLeverage NLP and deep learning to extract tradeable signals from market and alternative dataBook Description The explosive growth of digital data has boosted the demand for expertise in trading strategies that use machine learning (ML). This revised and expanded second edition enables you to build and evaluate sophisticated supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning models. This book introduces end-to-end machine learning for the trading workflow, from the idea and feature engineering to model optimization, strategy design, and backtesting. It illustrates this by using examples ranging from linear models and tree-based ensembles to deep-learning techniques from cutting edge research. This edition shows how to work with market, fundamental, and alternative data, such as tick data, minute and daily bars, SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, financial news, or satellite images to generate tradeable signals. It illustrates how to engineer financial features or alpha factors that enable an ML model to predict returns from price data for US and international stocks and ETFs. It also shows how to assess the signal content of new features using Alphalens and SHAP values and includes a new appendix with over one hundred alpha factor examples. By the end, you will be proficient in translating ML model predictions into a trading strategy that operates at daily or intraday horizons, and in evaluating its performance. What you will learnLeverage market, fundamental, and alternative text and image dataResearch and evaluate alpha factors using statistics, Alphalens, and SHAP valuesImplement machine learning techniques to solve investment and trading problemsBacktest and evaluate trading strategies based on machine learning using Zipline and BacktraderOptimize portfolio risk and performance analysis using pandas, NumPy, and pyfolioCreate a pairs trading strategy based on cointegration for US equities and ETFsTrain a gradient boosting model to predict intraday returns using AlgoSeek's high-quality trades and quotes dataWho this book is for If you are a data analyst, data scientist, Python developer, investment analyst, or portfolio manager interested in getting hands-on machine learning knowledge for trading, this book is for you. This book is for you if you want to learn how to extract value from a diverse set of data sources using machine learning to design your own systematic trading strategies. Some understanding of Python and machine learning techniques is required.