Twins drawing thousands to data site
Alternative information free for small investors
Stock traders are always looking for a new way to get insight on companies.
Business announcements and major news events are available to everyone. More investors are using alternative data to get ahead.
Twin brothers from Spring Green launched their own free alternative data site that's already attracting hundreds of thousands of users a month.
James and Chris Kardatzke debuted Quiver Quantitative in February. The free data platform is meant to help small investors. The idea is to give nonprofessional investors access to alternative data tools.
“A lot of these data sources weren't all that difficult to scrape and collect,” James said. “But there weren't good resources for small investors” and those that are available charge “tens of thousands of dollars a year to use a data set,” he said.
James started thinking about alternative data during an internship at an East Coast hedge fund.
Two of the brothers' data sets have taken off with thousands of views.
A dashboard of stock trading by U.S. senators and U.S. representatives garnered attention as representatives in Congress made stock trades after learning about the coronavirus pandemic before the disease spread across the country. Another tracks the movement of corporate jets.
Other dashboards track a company's Twitter account followers, clinical trials to find treatments for the coronavirus and the most popular stocks on platforms like Robinhood, among others. The Kardatzkes try to publish a new dashboard every week.
The site, Quiver Quantitative, has grown to more than 200,000 monthly active users since launching in February. Around 10,000 accounts have been created on the site. The brothers founded the company, Quiver Quantiative Inc., this spring.
Quiver raised a $100,000 pre-seed investment from the Idea Fund of La Crosse.
“They have a sophisticated approach and they're also dialed in to this growing army of young investors using Robinhood and other investing tools that bring the ability to invest to the mass market,” said Jonathon Horne, managing director of the Idea Fund of La
Crosse.
The brothers think alternative data gives the average person a better chance at being competitive against professional traders.
James graduated in May from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in finance and economics. Chris graduates in December with a degree in statistics. The Kardatzkes grew up in Spring Green. James scored a perfect 36 on the ACT. Chris scored a 35.
The brainy brothers plan to continue to grow Quiver's user base, add new tools to the platform and launch a mobile app by the end of the year. The idea is to eventually license the data to earn revenue. The main focus right now is driving user growth.