Tesla is a good example of why alternative data hasn’t helped the hedge fund industry as much as hoped - even if you knew sales or earnings in advance, it’d have been hard or impossible to make $. We live in cash flow from financing world, not cash flow from operations world
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would agree the issue with alternative data is that a lot of it might have issues, but there will be some datasets which are useful. I often hear about which datasets are not very useful, but for obvious reasons if folks find some useful, they'll generally be quiet.
Not only keep quiet, but actively try to prevent discovery eg with exclusivity agreements, lawsuits or even buying the firm that produces the data and in-housing it.
