People are leaving traditional jobs in droves according to the latest figures from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed a record breaking 4.5 Million resignations as of Nov 2021.

The trend has originated a movement on Reddit similar to r/wallstreetbets called r/antiwork where more than 1.7 Million active members share resignation stories, discuss unfair work practices, criticize their bosses, and advocate for employee rights and better work conditions.

We applied SESAMm’s AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine TextReveal® to analyze r/antiwork subreddit thread posts, as well as other related content, from a context and sentiment analysis perspective.

The full report, entitled “The Big Quit”, is one of our series of Alternative Data Trends, which leverages web data and AI to provide regular analytics on key industries and subjects. They typically contain alternative data based insights and analyses, including numerous detailed charts and graphs as well as supporting data which can be reprocessed by client teams.

Here are some of The Big Quit report’s highlights:

• Mentions of the Anti-Work movement exploded by 215% in June 2021 coinciding with the start of the ‘Great Resignation’.
• Leisure & Hospitality, Healthcare and Retail are the three most mentioned sectors.
• McDonalds and Starbucks are the two companies with the highest number of mentions.
• The three brands displaying the most negative sentiment are Wendy’s, Chipotle Mexican Grill and McDonald’s.
• The three most talked about topics are compensation benefits, and workload.
• The Debtstrike movement, seeking debt relief for the less fortunate in society as well as banning unfair debt practices, saw mentions shoot up 497% in September 2021.

Volume of Mentions of “Anti-work” as a predictive Indicator of The Big Quit

The graph above shows that prior to August 2021, anti-work mentions on Reddit have been fairly stable before this topic went viral with a 215% increase, this growth of mentions appears to be a leading indicator to the 4.5 million resignations in November 2021.

SESAMm’s TextReveal® platform can be used in a wide variety of use cases and projects. Request a copy of the full Alternative Data Trends report “The Big Quit” report here, or if you have any other questions regarding our data, or would like a demo, please contact info@sesamm.com.

The world of private equity has been fertile ground for the adoption of alternative data, including AI-driven insights from firms like SESAMm, an expert in Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Could SESAMm’s technology provide Carlyle with the tools to identify a better class of investment opportunity?

When SESAMm’s CEO Sylvain Forté met the man in charge of data at The Carlyle Group, at an industry conference, the opportunity arose to put SESAMm’s data to the test.

“I remember the first day I met Sylvain and he said, I can tell you if your company is trending positively or negatively on the internet,” recounts Matt Anderson, Chief Data Officer of Carlyle, at a recent PE Insights webinar, in which EQT and Apollo were also speaking. Sensing potential in the data, he decided to give it a go.

SESAMm’s NLP platform generates quantitative and qualitative analytics on a wide array of entities – from public and private companies, to brands, products and individuals, by running cutting edge algorithms across billions of web-based articles.

Their data lake is not limited to news stories from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, but spans a whole variety of global sources – social media, blog posts, professional forums, customer reviews and more, in over 100 languages.

Using this ability to interpret unstructured text from a huge slice of the internet, SESAMm’s team created insights designed to help Matt’s deal teams evaluate target companies.

The challenge was getting investment professionals to buy into the value of alternative data for private companies, so SESAMm condensed everything into easily-digestible reports. They included time-series and charts measuring companies on a variety of key metrics versus their peers, including ESG risk, e-reputation, competitive positioning, sentiment, positive and negative themes and other critical KPIs.

By regularly presenting SESAMm’s analytics reports to investment committees, Sylvain and Matt hoped to gradually convince deal teams that alternative data could have a positive impact on the investment process.

“It was about sharing the data in the form of slides directly with deal teams in a way that was automated on our side but easily consumable as part of the pre-deal decision process”, said Forté.

“We saw the need to convince people and show, time after time, that it really works, that this data is really valuable and can give an edge”, added Forté.

“In some instances it helped us to not make investments or avoid allocating resources to things that were marginal or moving in the wrong direction, and that was really valuable”, said Anderson.

To further prove the value of the data, Matt asked Sylvain to create analytics reports on a selection of Carlyle’s historical target companies. The idea was to see if SESAMm’s scores and analytics were predictive of the deal outcome, whether positive or negative.

“If we put a number on how positive SESAMm feels about some of these deals between one and ten, with one being, ‘avoid at all costs’ , and ten, ‘go for it’, what would it have told us?”, said Anderson.

After running the back test, the results showed a clear correlation between SESAMm’s analysis, and the deals that performed well and those that fell through.

“Looking at the results, I think that people would have really paused an investment committee around some of the conclusions”, commented Anderson.

“Having a view of the themes being surfaced, the plateaus in certain trends, and the sentiment charts heading in a negative direction was eye-opening for our leaders and deal teams – because they had to actually live through those deals. So seeing that kind of data, and what it can help you avoid was really insightful.” Says Anderson.

Ultimately, the integration of SESAMm’s analytics reports into Carlyle’s investment process was so successful that they were rolled out across all global investment teams. The two companies have developed a strong partnership based on the proven value of alternative data in the private equity investment process.

To find out how SESAMm can support your investment decision-making, to request a demo or for any other questions regarding our data do not hesitate to contact info@sesamm.com.

Discover our whitepaper highlighting the power of web data on predictive analytics for the financial industry: how alternative data strengthen the market, the challenges of collecting web data and case studies presenting different approaches, such as ESG, showcasing TextReveal features and capacities for investment purposes.

In complement, please find here our Recorded Webinar “Predict financial movements with web data”.

Introduction

In the past, investment management institutions relied mostly on traditional data to gain an edge in investing. Traditional data ranges from SEC filings to earnings reports and pricing information any type of data produced by the company itself. The rise of the digital age, however, has opened up new sources of data for investors beyond the scope of traditional data. The seemingly infinite scope of alternative data includes data produced from credit cards, satellites, social media and perhaps most importantly the web.

With the additional integration of alternative data, investment management institutions and hedge funds in particular that once relied only on traditional data now have an edge in predicting the rise and fall of the markets. As increasing numbers of financial institutions jump on the bandwagon of alternative data, spending on alternative data by trading and asset management firms is set to exceed $7 billion by 2020.^[1]

What was only a few years ago a question of when institutions should start using data has shifted to the question of how they can organize and structure these mostly unstructured datasets. And with 4 billion webpages and 1.2 million terabytes of data on the internet estimated to be generated globally by 2025, there is no shortage of web data to sort through. As increasing numbers of investment management institutions incorporate alternative web data into their predictive algorithms, it will change the face of investment as we know it.

This white paper is intended to be a guide for investment management (IMs) institutions to better understand how alternative web data is quickly becoming an essential component for generating alpha and mitigating investment risk. In addition, it explores different models of web data crawlers and what IMs need to look for as they incorporate alternative web data into their predictive analytics models.

Section 1: Beating the Market with Alternative Web Data

“Your company’s biggest database isn’t your transaction, CRM, ERP or other internal database. Rather it’s the Web itself…Treat the Internet itself as your organization’s largest data source.”
— Gartner

As previously mentioned, alternative data includes any type of data that is beyond the scope of traditional data: satellite imagery, social media data, and web data (which includes news sites, blogs, discussions and forums) along with credit card data. Alternative web data, which falls under the broader category of big data, is typically unstructured and demands a process for structuring it in order to deliver insights.

Access the full whitepaper

All our best wishes for this new year 2019!

2018 proved to be an eventful year for SESAMm with multiple renowned customers acquired, our A series fundraising campaign, numerous prizes won and milestones reached. Here is a look back at our rewarding year 2018 followed by our next steps for 2019.

Successful market entry in the US and around the world

The rapid growth of the alternative data industry and of SESAMm

As a Fintech company specialized in alternative data for Asset Management, 2018 represented a thrilling year in our industry and 2019 already promises to be even more exciting.

During 2018, after our very first business trip in the United States, our international sales development beyond Europe began accelerating. In just one year, we already signed contracts with multiple clients. These include major hedge funds in the US and a major global trading company managing $100 billion in financial assets and part of the Top 10 in its market. The US market represents a powerful strategic growth driver and we are already preparing to open an office there soon!

SESAMm signed its first contract with a client in Africa: Ipro Investment, renown asset manager established for 25 years specialized in emerging markets. Finally, we also signed a contract with our first Japanese client, Nikko Global Wrap, one of the subsidiaries of Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management which is a major asset manager in Japan managing JPY 1.7 trillion.

Strengthening and developing our position in Europe

At the European level, SESAMm has also extended its customer portfolio:

• Groupama AM: new major clients and leading French Asset Management players managing €103 billion Asset under Management (AuM);
• Société Générale: leading French bank present all over the world;
• Raiffeisen Bank International: one of the leading banks in Europe with more than 50,000 employees servicing over 16.5 million customers and possessing around 2,400 business outlets;
• GT Patrimoine : the largest consulting and private management firm in the Lorraine area and based in France for 12 years.

In addition, after our 1st successful collaboration, a new contract was signed with Candriam, leading Asset Management firm and members of the New York Life Group, managing more than $112 billion AuM worldwide.

We are very proud to see how much traction we gained in just a year. The growing use and interest in alternative data for the Asset Management industry, both for quantitative and fundamental funds and asset managers, lead us to prepare for new opportunities of growth & business development.

Cutting edge solutions to respond to market needs

Big Data & AI for Cryptocurrencies

Our first cryptocurrency project began in early 2018. Initially, we started tracking the evolution of the most popular cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) and we analyzed their social data to produce social sentiment & emotions indicators. These indicators have since been integrated into our visualization platform of market sentiment, L’Humeur des Marchés.

This led us to establish a unique partnership based on L’Humeur des Marchés with NapoleonX, a major player as the leading French cryptocurrency manager: the first sentiment and emotion cryptocurrencies analysis destined for the general public. Since then, ETH and BTC sentiment, emotions & opinion value from SESAMm has been available to individual investors and the general public on NapoleonX platform.

The evolution of L’Humeur des Marchés

Our platform L’Humeur des Marchés is an essential tool to guide companies in their investments. During 2018, multiple improvements were added into L’Humeur des Marchés to further enhance its insights & analytics. For example, users have now the possibility to build automated strategies which can generate daily trading signals. Multiple new features were also added such as a strategic backtesting system, daily alerts with 3 years of history and day+1 signal to forecast market movements giving asset managers an edge over competitors.

"L'humeur des marchés" is SESAMm's data visualization platform to analyze market sentiment & emotion for asset management

L’Humeur des Marchés, our data visualization platform

Finally, additional filters have been added to better study & analyze market sentiment: there are now 6 different filters for data sources (sort by sources from web & press, news, blogs, discussions, social trading or all of them) and 9 languages covered (sort by English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, German or all of them). These new filters allow for a wider and more accurate coverage of assets, leading to improved tools & insights for investment decision.

Global recognition & awards for SESAMm

To accomplish our worldwide ambitions, we have started being more and more present abroad, especially at international events. They represent great occasions to promote SESAMm, demonstrate the unique benefits and advantages brought by our technologies & solutions and finally create business opportunities.

This year, we participated in many international events in the US and in Japan, including New York and Hong Kong for Eagle Alpha’s Alternative Data event, Canada, Africa and even London at the French Fintech Tour.

Having been selected for unique international awards reinforces our confidence in the benefits of our solutions for the Asset Management industry, for example with “Talk data to me” by Neudata, Elevator Lab Competition, and Groupama’s award “Créateur de confiance” (Trust Creator) among others.

SESAMm won the pitch "Talk data to Me" of Alternative Data Summit event by Neudata

SESAMm pitch “Talk Data to Me” winner during Alternative Data Summit by Neudata

Moreover, SESAMm has competed in several acceleration programs, in which we were selected in the following ones:

• Fintech Business Camp Tokyo, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government accelerator program by Invest Tokyo and powered by Accenture;
• Elevator Lab, Acceleration program of Raiffeisen Bank International where SESAMm competed and was selected;
• French Tech Tour America, IMPACT USA’s program to prepare and discover North America’s markets & opportunities;  
• Pass French Tech, La French Tech’s highly selective program for hyper-growth startups & companies.

SESAMm’s plans for 2019: recruitment, development and growth

This year, we are very proud to see our team grow so much in so little time: we had 16 collaborators at the beginning of January 2018 and we are now a team of 28 members! Talented profiles have joined SESAMm team with NLP, AI & Quant engineers & experts from world-renowned schools. New collaborators will join SESAMm in the first quarter of 2019 and we are still recruiting in various fields such as Data Science, Quantitative Analysis, IT and Natural Language Processing among others. You can find all our offers on our dedicated page SESAMm Career!

Following our international success, especially in the US and in Japan, we are now preparing to open an office in the US in the following months and are already considering this option for Japan. Next month’s promise to be exciting and we will be participating in multiple events such as AI & Data Science for trading in New York in March, Machine Learning in Quant Finance by GFMI in April, and many events & conferences on alternative data, data science, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data for Asset Management around the world.

As you can see, 2018 represented SESAMm an exceptional year for its growth with new customers, including global companies, technological improvements for our solutions & services and a bigger and even more motivated team! Our major event in 2018 was the accomplishment of a €2.6 million Series A fundraising campaign, which enabled us to continue our international development, mainly in America and Asia, and the recruitment of many profiles. 2019 will represent another step for SESAMm to become a leading company in the alternative data solutions in the world. Stay tuned: SESAMm news will arrive soon!

Happy new year! 2018 already holds many exciting news with various projects and clients already onboard. We begin the year with 2 recently signed contracts with top-ranked hedge funds, additional features and cryptocurrencies added to L’Humeur des Marchés and published plentiful of internships and job opportunities. Moreover, following our partnership with Eagle Alpha and the event in New York last month, we will be organizing a roadshow in London to meet high-ranked hedge funds on February 7th and 8th.

Collaboration with new major clients

Recently, we have signed 2 major contracts with top-ranked hedge funds.

The first contract is with Nikko Global Wrap (one of the subsidiaries of Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management, a major asset manager in Japan) managing JPY 1.7 trillion.

Second contract has been signed with La Française Investment Solutions, a subsidiary of La Française Group, a top 10 French asset manager with more than €64bn assets under management.

This great news proves our technology is trusted by major financial institutions and gives us more confidence to continue looking for collaboration opportunities worldwide.

Future contracts and new distributor

We are currently in negotiation talks with another major French asset manager, a bank, two insurers and a US hedge fund. We hope to keep up at the same pace for the whole year and sign new contracts in the weeks ahead.

Also, we have recently started a new partnership with Neudata, a major UK alternative data distributor. We have signed an agreement, so they could support us and promote our solutions & services.

After New York, London

Last month, SESAMm made its very 1st trip to the USA for the BIG Alternative Data Showcase week organized by our partner Eagle Alpha. It proved to be a valuable experience from which multiple business opportunities arose and we launched many product trials with significant US funds.

Next month, we are planning a roadshow in London with Eagle Alpha. We already arranged multiple meetings with hedge funds and, thanks to Eagle Alpha’s support, we are given a unique opportunity to present and show our solutions to asset managers and C-level decision makers.

New additions to L’Humeur des Marchés

Concerning our platform L’Humeur des Marchés, we are glad to announce that we will soon be providing historical data concerning the assets. This update is planned to happen during next month and will give users more flexibility and options related to their investment and strategies.

In addition, an alert module is under development and we have begun to include cryptocurrencies into the platform. Most of the top-ranked cryptocurrencies are currently covered – such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple, among others as shown below.

Developments are planned to further extend our coverage of alt-coins with the objective to include every single major capitalization into L’Humeur des Marchés.

New job opportunities

Last but not least, we will be scaling our team during 2018. Multiple internships and job offers are currently available to further support SESAMm’s growth and ambition. We are looking for candidates in the fields of IT, finance and Data science but, most of all, highly motivated individuals seeking challenges! You can find all our offers by following this link. We would be very excited to receive your applications or recommendations for profiles seeking to work with us!

Thank you for your support and best wishes to you for 2018!