Mike Liscombe is Associate Vice President and Head of Data Product Development and Alternative Data at Nasdaq.

What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2023?

A key theme for 2023 has been helping clients unlock insights from the data ecosystem. This includes technology, the tools and services to drive their business at scale; marketplaces, making content easy to discover and access and data; and unique and powerful content to help investors make more informed decisions.

Specifically for alternative data, as our clients continue to grow and expand – wrangling, managing, and integrating data has been a strategic focus. As part of the data management process, one key factor that clients are approaching with renewed vigor is their due diligence processes. This has always been a priority for our clients and as the industry continues to evolve, we’ve seen them adapt their processes in real-time.

What was the highlight of 2023?

The highlight of the year was the proliferation of the alt data industry. Products that have been successful in markets like the U.S. are now growing internationally. For example, there has been industry-wide adoption of products focused on consumer purchasing trends and securities flow. With this broad adoption, more investors have been focusing their efforts on building teams and technological capabilities to ingest datasets. As a result, we’ve seen funds that traditionally wouldn’t buy alternative data now getting their feet wet.

What trends are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in product development will have a massive impact, and we’re going to see this play out more in 2024. Technology has matured and broad adoption of large language models (LLMs) has increased. As people have spent the past year testing and building, next year we anticipate seeing more products powered by AI coming to market. We’re excited to keep our eye on what’s to come as new products will increase the efficiency of answering questions from data and augment human capabilities.

What are your expectations for 2024?

Alt data products that can help investors gain an information edge in understanding macroeconomic trends will become increasingly important as we continue to navigate toward the perceived tail-end of the current inflationary environment. We expect to see investors focusing on consumer trends and coinciding data, especially in those economies where consumer spending is a key indicator of economic health. This information is becoming even more important globally given the growing dichotomy between globalization and deglobalization of specific industries.

Overall, we remain truly excited about the ongoing evolution of the alternative data industry and anticipate a further acceleration in product innovation fueled by recent advances in AI.

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Mike Liscombe is an Associate Vice President and Head of Data Product Development and Alternative Data at Nasdaq. He is responsible for driving revenue growth for Nasdaq’s Data business through the creation of new data products and services overseeing a team of data scientists, data engineers, product managers, and partnerships executives. As a seasoned leader in data strategy and innovation, Mike also champions the development and adoption of modern AI within the Nasdaq Data business.

Mike joined Nasdaq in 2019 through the acquisition of Quandl Inc., a Forbes Fintech 50 startup, where he led the build-out of their award-winning Alternative Data business. Before Quandl, he held various roles in quantitative analysis, data engineering, algorithmic trading technology, and hardware design.

Mike holds both a master’s and bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from York University, Toronto, Canada.