EU market abuse rules could trip alternative data users

Regulators might treat some new datasets as inside information, lawyers say

Users could find that some alternative datasets are deemed inside information

Investors using alternative data could fall foul of European Union market abuse rules as regulators may see some of the data as non-public information, according to lawyers.

Derived from non-traditional sources of information about companies and the economy, such as social media, credit card transactions and bank trading flows, new datasets are a hot topic in systematic investing. But whether some such data can be deemed public or not is a “grey area”, and investors found to be using non-public