[Chris2048]

I think here is an idea isn't unique to Quants/finance: curated datasets.

Hosted data-sets that are fully cleaned, verified and kept up to date. You pay a fee for the feed, which essentially covers initial and on-going curation. Fees would probably be based on usage (dev/test/commercial etc) but also the realistic market value of curation.

There's a mile of difference between a data-set that's been fed through a few cleaners and is 99% right, and one that is thoroughly checked, 99.99% right, and still updated as such with little delay. The former is the "one-man dev looking for easy passive income", the latter is the "quality datasets taken seriously".

[atemerev]

Algo trading is about having the edge.

The edge is something you have and other people don't.

Enjoy your feature engineering.

(Meaning: selling the same curated data product to many customers undermines its value. Overpricing it and selling only to the selected few, on the other hand...)

[Chris2048]

But this is algo trading specifically, the scope for curated datasets is larger.

Plus, what stops anyone building on top of a dataset? If this isn't dive ebay value do any third parties add?

A dataset sold to many customers doesn't undermine the price charged by the seller, as there would be no competitive advantage by not using it either.

[Chris2048]

s/"dive ebay"/"done, what"/

And to clarify the last point:

If a create a dataset for $100 I could sell it to one person for $120, or 6 for $20 - I make the same even if the value to each individual client is reduced; on the other hand, the value to each client versus* making their own is (120-100=) $20 in the first case, but (120-20=) $100 in the second, so fewer clients are likely to "roll their own" competing datasets.

[sjg007]

Seems like neural networks would have some advantage here...

[iamwil]

What sort of datasets do quants and finance need? For finance, I imagine it has to be both accurate and realtime for it to be of any value?

[osullivj]

Accurate yes. Realtime not necessarily. EOD risk doesn't need real time market data.

[qorrect]

Yes where are these data sets ?

[infinite8s]

That's been around for 20 years, and comes with it's own hardware platform (the Bloomberg terminal).