From memos to texts, algos fish for signals in-house

Hedge funds turn to natural language tools to pry more value out of their analysts’ internal writings

Fundamental hedge funds are starting to use algorithms to more clearly see sentiment – their own – by hunting for signals in the e-mail, instant messages and memos of their own analysts.

The algorithms used were first built to glean sentiment from the crush of public media sources, like news reports and outside research. But non-quant firms, which do their own private research heretofore unaided by artificial intelligence, are using it to look for more unguarded opinions from company managers