How Computers Trawl a Sea
of Data for Stock Picks
Course: Fin 493
In Two Sigma’s ‘Hacker’s Lab,’ there are dozens of Ph.D. Scientists
working on giving their secretive hedge-fund a leg up investing $24
billion it has under management. They collect the information from
newswires, earning reports, weather bulletins and Twitter. They write
trading algorithms that make stock picks based on signals in those
data. Two Sigma is part of a new frontier in computerized investing,
in which scientists with little formal financial training are trying to
funnel massive computing power into forecasting securities prices
by drawing from data.
