Visualization Start-Up Launches Market Data Tool
December 15, 2008
Houston-based start-up Aqumin has introduced a visualization tool it says lets investors seamlessly integrate large streams of data into a three-dimensional environment.
The solution, dubbed AlphaVision and launched late last month, "allows an individual or enterprise to access the entire market at one time with all of the data in one view," explained Michael Zeitlin, CEO of Aqumin. The 3-D landscape is linked to additional data sources, noted Zeitlin, who in January formed Aqumin. In 2000, he started Magic Earth, a visualization technology provider that was acquired by Halliburton two years later.
"At a time when uncertainty is rampant in the securities markets, valuation seems broken, relative value is hard to assess," Aqumin provides an "innovative solution to the problem of too much data and no way to see it all," said Zeitlin, noting that the tool enables rapid analysis. "We invented a 3-D financial interpretation environment that takes advantage of our mind's cognitive ability to recognize patterns from disparate sources of data." Aqumin is charging clients a monthly fee to use the service.
On Nov. 18, Aqumin announced that it will offer data from Thomson Reuters' DataScope Select and Reuters Knowledge product suites. Information on more than 43,000 global equities issues will be available to AlphaVision users, including business segment data and estimates, end-of-day pricing and historical data. Mike Powell, global head of enterprise information at Thomson Reuters, called Aqumin's analysis platform an innovative service that will offer customers "deeper insight" through its 3-D visualization.
Days earlier, Aqumin said that the Digital Data Feed subsidiary of Barchart.com will provide AlphaVision with real-time pricing data. According to Aqumin CTO Sean Spicer, the visualization service, which will offer data on over 10,000 global indexes, will add more than 3 million fixed-income instruments next year.
In a statement issued by Aqumin, David Harris, SVP of investments at UBS Financial Services, a beta customer, said the platform allows him to "accomplish in five minutes what used to take me five weeks to do. The securities research world is no longer flat."
