40% of Buy-Side Lost Money Due to Bad Event Data and Lost Five-Figures

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Wall Street Horizon, an alternative data provider specializing in corporate event intelligence, today released the results of its Corporate Event Research Survey. Conducted between August 17-23, the survey polled over 100 institutional market participants, nearly two-thirds of whom were quantitative or discretionary fund managers.

Key findings from the survey included the following:

• Nearly half (45%) of respondents reported losses or missed a trading opportunity due to an incorrect event date. 40% of those who lost money said the loss was in excess of $10,000 on a single trade, while multiple respondents pegged a shortfall in the millions.

• Knowing when an event changes – both for alerting and back-testing purposes – is functionality that an overwhelming majority (80%) would like to have. Currently no event data vendors provide this capability for tracked events beyond earnings. An equal number of respondents (40% each) indicated they want event change notifications for competitive monitoring purposes and for tracking companies they care about.

• Respondents don’t believe that speed is a significant challenge when it comes to event data tracking. Instead, the vast majority noted difficulty in finding data (42%) or inaccurate data (38%) as their primary struggles. 

• Legacy event data providers are generally seen as having significant room to improve when it comes to accuracy, as only 12% of respondents believe that the event data they consume is “very accurate”. The majority (54%) believe their event provider’s data is “somewhat accurate” at best.

• Earnings release dates remain the event type utilized by most (82%), but the tracking of investor conference dates (65%), buyback dates (52%), dividend payment dates (52%) and shareholder meetings (36%) are all growing in popularity.