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What Is Quiver Quantitative?
How do you actually use Quiver Quantitative to find investment ideas?
Is this investment research platform reliable?
Can you really invest better using the data and strategies provided by Quiver Quantitative?
After using Quiver Quantitative, I will share with you everything about my experience and help you make an informed decision.
What Is Quiver Quantitative?
Quiver Quantitative is an investment data platform, founded in Feb 2020 by two college students, to provide investors and traders with alternative data to help them make better investment decisions.
What is alternative data?
Where does Quiver Quantitative get its data?
Alternative data is non-traditional data.
Traditional data refer to data on things like financial statements, earnings, dividends, and analyst estimates.
On the other hand, alternative data includes data on things like Congress trades, social media discussion, web traffic, US patents, and government disclosure.
How does Quiver Quantitative get this alternative data?
It scrapes alternative data from across the internet and then aggregates them.
For example, it scrapes free and public information from the FDA website, Reddit/WallStreetBets, Twitter, Glassdoor, and the US Patent Office website.
As for Congress trades and House trades, the Stock Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act requires members of U.S. Congress to publicly file and disclose any financial transaction within 45 days of its occurrence.
So, Quiver Quantitative downloads those disclosures and gets data on their stock trades.
Generally, all the datasets are updated daily except the Reddit/WallStreetBets dataset which updates throughout the day.
How To Use Quiver Quantitative
So, how do you use Quiver Quantitative platform?
Everyone can use the alternative data on its platform for free, as long as you register a free account.
So, the question becomes, is this alternative actually useful in helping you make investment decisions?
Below are all the types of alternative data you can find on Quiver Quantitative.
After going through them one by one, I find most of these data are not actionable data.
For example, Data from Reddit WallStreetBets shows you which stock is most talked about over the past day or 7 days, or the past month.
Do you go and immediately buy the most mentioned stock?
Recently, Bed Bath & Beyond was the most mentioned stock.
Below is its share price chart.
As you can see, it shot up from around $9 all the way to slightly more than $20 in a span of a few days.
However, it crashed all the way down to a new low shortly after that.
People who bought on the way up would be looking at a losing position if they didn’t get out in time at the high.
Would the data provided by Quiver Quantitative tell you when to get in and when to get out?
No.
The only thing you get from the data is that the stock is going to be volatile (i.e. highly risky).
Did you know that Billionaire investor Ryan Cohen sold his entire stake in Bed Bath & Beyond when the Reddit retail traders ran the price up to about $20?
His average cost price was around $15.
So, retail traders did him a favor to help him turn his initial losing position into a huge realized win of $60 million.
When it comes to trading, the risk is very high.
This is especially true if you are just trading based on tips from random strangers on Reddit or Twitter or Youtube.
Let’s look at another type of alternative data which is Senate Trades or House Trades.
Below are the recent trades made by House Representatives.
Do you follow them to buy (or sell) the stocks as well?
How much are you going to buy (or sell)?
When are you going to sell (or buy)?
Don’t forget that House Representatives are only required to disclose within 45 days of their transactions.
So, there is a huge time lag.
By the time of public disclosure, the share price might have already moved either up or down.
Also, you don’t get to see the full picture of the representative’s entire portfolio and everyone’s investment objectives are different.
For example, you don’t know their current stock position and options position.
The trades that make sense to them might not work for your situation.
So, simply copying their trades most probably would not turn out well for you.
On top of that, House Representatives might not be the BEST investors with a proven investment track record.
Below is the trading performance of several House Representatives.
Not every single one of them is profitable over a long period of time.
Are Quiver Quantitative Trading Strategies Good?
So, are Quiver Quantitative trading strategies good?
Personally, I think the trading strategies on Quiver Quantitative are not proven strategies.
First of all, it’s all based on back-testing using the stock price data for the past two years only.
It’s too short to be conclusive.
Also, the strategies such as “Twitter Anti-Momentum”, “Inverse Cramer”, and “WallStreetBets Momentum” don’t really have a sound basis.
For example, the “Inverse Cramer” strategy is to go against all Cramer’s stock recommendations.
Although Cramer does not get every stock recommendation right, he also doesn’t get every stock recommendation wrong.
In fact, Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust portfolio is overall profitable even though it has underperformed the S&P 500 index.
So, this “Inverse Cramer” strategy does not make sense to me at all.
Quiver Quantitative Pricing
There are four different pricing plans that you can choose from:
- Free
- Hobbyist ($20/month)
- Trader ($30/month)
- Enterprise (enquire for pricing)
So, what is the difference between these plans?
The free plan is open to everyone.
Simply register an account, then you can get access to live data on all the alternative data provided by Quiver Quantitative such as Congress Trading, Insider Trading, WallStreetBets Discussion, and Institutional Trading.
The next tier is the Hobbyist Plan.
The difference between Hobbyist Plan and Free Plan is that you get access to Quiver Alerts and be the first one to know the updates across all their datasets and also you get a customizable watchlist.
For the “Trader” Plan, you get all the live data, alerts plus Quiver Strategies, and access to third-party data (such as Estimize Forecasts).
So, is it worth paying for its strategies and alerts at $30 per month?
Personally, I don’t think I will make my investment decisions purely on its data or strategies because its strategies are not time-tested proven strategies that will make money consistently.
The company was only started in 2020 by two college students.
Up until now, there are only two proven investment strategies that work:
So, I think it’s fine to incorporate these alternative data into your investment decision-making process.
But, I don’t think it’s a good idea to solely rely on it to make trading or investment decisions.
What Are Other Quiver Quantitative Alternatives?
So, what are some better Quiver Quantitative alternatives?
Personally, I am using Seeking Alpha and Stock Rover to do my stock research and analysis.
Seeking Alpha not only helps you find good investment ideas but it also provides all the data (e.g. financials, earnings, growth, valuation, dividends, peers, profitability, news, charting, etc) and tools that you need for stock research and analysis in one place.
One of its most unique features is its stock ratings.
There are three different types of stock ratings offered by Seeking Alpha:
- SA Author Ratings ‒ ranging from Strong Buy to Strong Sell by Seeking Alpha contributors
- Wall Street Ratings – consensus and price targets on the stock by Wall Street Analysts
- Quant Ratings ‒ based on over 100 metrics, updated daily
The most interesting of all is Seeking Alpha’s proprietary Quant Rating.
It was developed by CressCap, quantitative analytics and data platform that was acquired by Seeking Alpha.
So, what exactly is Quant Rating, and also how does it really work?
Quant rating is derived by comparing over 100 metrics for the stock to the same metrics for the other stocks in its sector.
These metrics include the company’s financial data, stock price performance, and analysts’ estimates of future revenue and earnings. There are five types of Quant ratings:
- Strong Sell (i.e. a score of 1)
- Sell (i.e. a score of 2)
- Hold (i.e. a score of 3)
- Buy (i.e. a score of 4)
- Strong Buy (i.e. a score of 5)
The advantage of this method is that you can use Quant Rating to find the best performer of any particular industry or sector.
So, how exactly is Quant Rating calculated?
Quant Rating is derived after taking into account the following five “Factor Grades”:
- Value
- Growth
- Profitability
- Momentum
- EPS Revisions
The Factor Grade is determined by comparing the relevant metrics for the factor for the stock to those for the other stocks in the same sector.
For example, to determine the grade for the “Growth” factor, metrics such as past sales growth, projected earnings growth, and stock price performance for the stock will be compared to the same metrics for the other stocks in the same sector.
Then, each factor is assigned a grade, from A+ to F.
Grade A+ means that the stock has the highest growth potential compared to its peers in the same sector.
On the other hand, a grade of F means that the stock has the lowest growth potential compared to its peers in the same sector.
So, how have Seeking Alpha’s Strong Buy Quant Ratings performed, compared with S&P 500?
Do take note that the performance is based on backtesting.
From 2010 to 2022, Seeking Alpha Strong Buy achieved a total return of $174,156 based on $10,000 in investment capital while S&P 500 achieved a total return of $40,721.
The results are very impressive.
When you compare the results generated by following Seeking Alpha’s Strong Buy recommendation with the results from Quiver Quantitative’s Trading Strategies, I am more convinced by the former.
Furthermore, the method used to derive Strong Buy recommendations is very sound.
Pricing-wise, Quiver Quantitative is $300 per year while Seeking Alpha Premium is usually priced at $239 per year.
For Seeking Alpha, there are three types of pricing plans:
- Basic: Free
- Seeking Alpha Premium:
$239/year$189/year - Seeking Alpha Pro: $2400/ year (mostly for hedge fund managers)
Right now, there is a free 7-day trial for you to test drive it and see if it works for you. If you decide to get it, there is a special $50 discount for you by using this link.
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