Finance Industry to Explore Risks and Rewards of Big Data

NEW YORK, April 23, 2013 – At what may well be the first conference of its kind, Commissioner Scott D. O’Malia of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission will join thought leaders from throughout the financial industry to grapple with issues arising from massive amounts of digital financial data. The Department of Risk and Finance Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) will host Big Data Finance on Friday, May 3, 2013, on its downtown Brooklyn Campus.

While the emerging field of Big Data – which tries to make sense and use of the vast quantities of digital information that technology has wrought – is a hot topic, few fields generate as many data points as the financial industry, with each bid and stock trade, millions of times each minute. Big Data may one day predict stock pricing. But if only big institutions have the computing firepower of Big Data, they will widen their advantage over small traders, said Charles Tapiero, the NYU-Poly Topfer Distinguished Professor of Financial Engineering and Technology Management and department chair.

“It is vital that we address the issues of Big Data now, as the technology explodes with possibilities, so that we can properly shape regulation and address moral issues such as privacy,” Tapiero said. “Big Data Finance will offer new information, targeting the precise needs of the financial community.”

In his keynote address, Morgan Stanley Managing Director Kevin Atteson will outline how his institution deals with data sets on loans, housing transactions, consumer credit and more.

The eye-opening conference will also address such topics as data analytics versus financial econometrics, behavioral data finance, data security and legal protection and credit risk.

Speakers and panelists will include Irene Aldridge, Philip Maymin and Carmen Wong Ulrich of NYU-Poly; Robert Almgren, co-founder of Quantitative Brokers and fellow in the NYU Mathematics in Finance Program; Marcos Lopez de Prada, the head of quantitative trading and research at Hess Energy Trading Company; Sasha Stoikov, Financial Engineering, Cornell University; Peter Kolm, Dennis Shasha and Eric Vanden-Eijnden of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences; and Johan Walden of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.