.png)
About Point Focal
Point Focal believes Fintech analytics should be held to a higher standard and enable asset managers to make better investment decisions. As former market-risk and sales-traders at buy-side and sell-side investment management firms, we also believe Fintech applications should be easy to implement and easy to use. Point Focalʼs Focus List™ makes it simple to link your portfolios with the marketʼs best alternative data. Its automated data operation and visual analytics enable Point Focalʼs users to make better entry and exit decisions that improve performance and risk management.
Buy-side, sell-side, and wealth management firms use Point Focalʼs Focus List to access quantitative insights from high-value, difficult to access data sources including Estimize, Stocktwits, and Alternative Trading System activity. Our users are modern portfolio managers, traders, and analysts seeking insight that does not come from traditional sources: higher quality earnings estimates, custom sentiment modeling, and ATS analytics. The Focus List gives Point Focalʼs users the ability to analyze and report on more portfolios and more accounts in less time – not with gut feelings, but with data-driven insight.
The Focus List integrates market and alternative data across portfolios with performance attribution in absolute terms and vs. a benchmark. Natural language generation surfaces insight in written narratives alongside visual analytics.
The Focus List and IEX Cloud
The IEX Cloud API has been thoughtfully designed to accelerate content development and it continues to mature. Its flexible structure lets Point Focal decide how to capture, store, and process financial data. This makes it easy to integrate content with alternative data sources and client data, and the model facilitates rapid response times to product enhancement requests from clients. From a total cost of ownership standpoint, the beauty of IEX Cloud is its elastic model; Point Focal pays only for the data it uses. Point Focal controls its data usage and has visibility into its growth which is incredibly helpful. IEX Cloudʼs responsive support makes us feel more like a partner than a client – they are invested in our success.
The Focus List uses many IEX Cloud API Core Data endpoints. Quote and Chart endpoints are naturally critical for Fintech analytics; Point Focal extends their usefulness by integrating alternative content to create advanced performance attribution views unique to the Focus List. From inception, Point Focal has been at the forefront of Alternative Trading System reporting – the IEX Cloud Volume by Venue endpoint enriches our market share analytics for lit and dark liquidity venues. The IEX Cloud batching capability is critical to our ability to deliver highly performant and scalable analytics.
The Focus List provides stock-by-stock dark-pool liquidity analytics across Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs) that process more than 30% of U.S. equity volume.
Integrating these IEX Cloud endpoints with the Focus List has helped maximize user benefits, including the ability to analyze and report on more portfolios and more accounts in less time – not with gut feeling, but with data-driven insight. The result is access to modern, quantified analytics that informs decision-making and drives client engagement. Point Focal has exciting content in development utilizing IEX Cloudʼs Stock Research and Stock Profile datasets that will continue to extend user benefits.
Asset Managers and Fintech Disruption
Asset managers are overwhelmed with data and have increasingly more information than insight. Market, reference, and alternative datasets are growing faster than many firms can access and interpret. The Focus List is Point Focalʼs response to this environment. It captures and processes the highest quality Fintech content and integrates it with portfolios to help clients make better trading and risk management decisions. Its data operation and analytic reports are automated and easy-to-use. Collaborating with IEX has enabled Point Focal to develop and deliver the Focus List to a group of institutional users - portfolio managers, traders and research analysts with demanding expectations. Point Focal has been able to meet and exceed their expectations because of the strength of the data operation driven by IEX Cloud.
Higher-quality earnings estimates from Estimize are integrated across portfolios. Historical trends, upcoming release activity and post-earnings drift results are analyzed.
Since its launch, Point Focal has been proud to be early adopters of IEX Cloud. Its capabilities facilitated fast production of early Focus List prototypes that helped showcase its fintech analytic capabilities. Today IEX Cloud enables Point Focal to produce high-quality, enterprise-scale content without large teams of resources or significant outlays in data and infrastructure costs.
In their brief history, IEX Cloud has established a legacy of technology innovation and healthy disruption in capital markets. We strive to emulate these qualities as we deliver Fintech analytics to portfolio managers, traders, and analysts. IEX Cloud gives life to Point Focalʼs vision.
Focus List users can quantify historical sentiment models by stock and by portfolio, bringing unprecedented visibility to social sentiment analytics.
