March 2026 Data Roundup: Geopolitics, AI & Alt Data

With a lot going on in the geopolitical space, this month's roundup includes the biggest news from across the financial market relevant to the alt data and AI community.

Before we begin - our annual NYC Spring BattleFin AI & Alt Data conference is happening May 14th, just 6 weeks away and, yes, we are back on the boat - the esteemed Intrepid Aircraft Carrier! Now is the time to start making plans if you haven’t done so already.  We also have a webinar with Revelio Labs workforce data on April 7th:  Anticipating the AI job loss Tsunami.   You can sign up HERE.

For a chance to earn a complimentary ticket to attend our NY event and the VIP dinner (a $395 value) - we are inviting our buy side network to nominate any new or emerging data providers for our New Data Provider Showcase. They must be new to BattleFin. If you'd like to participate email us at events@battlefin.com to submit your nomination.

Buy Side Performance & News

Bridgewater Associates reported a strong start to 2026, with its flagship Pure Alpha fund posting gains driven by macro positions in commodities and rates as global economic uncertainty continued to create opportunities for systematic macro strategies, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Renaissance Technologies saw its Medallion fund return approximately 25% in 2025, continuing its long-run outperformance, while the firm's externally-available funds lagged amid challenging conditions for systematic equity strategies, according to Bloomberg. 

Coatue Management made several new technology investments including positions in AI infrastructure companies as the firm continues to focus on generative AI themes across its public and private portfolios, according to Bloomberg.

Appaloosa Management founder David Tepper reduced equity exposure in his fund's latest filing, citing concerns about elevated equity valuations and growing uncertainty around US fiscal policy and Federal Reserve rate decisions, according to Reuters.

Point72 and Balyasny Asset Management have both restricted staff from trading on prediction markets through personal accounts, citing regulatory and compliance concerns amid increasing scrutiny of alternative trading venues by financial regulators, according to Bloomberg.

Andurand Commodities Discretionary Enhanced, Pierre Andurand's flagship fund, surged roughly 20% in the first half of March, fuelled by bullish positions on crude oil amid heightened Middle East tensions, according to Bloomberg. 

Old West Investment Management delivered a 31% gain for its flagship fund in 2026, driven by a strategic increase in energy stock holdings built well ahead of the geopolitical developments that sent oil prices sharply higher, according to Bloomberg.

Caxton Associates suffered losses exceeding $1.3bn at its flagship macro strategy in March, as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East drove sharp moves across global asset markets, emerging as one of the most prominent hedge fund casualties of recent volatility, according to the Financial Times.

Goldman Sachs analysts flagged signs of capitulation in hedge fund equity positioning in late March, with aggressive shorting activity and systematic selling reaching extreme levels that could paradoxically set the stage for a sharp market rebound, according to Bloomberg.

Fund Launches, Closings, Redemptions & Asset Raising 

Millennium Management withdrew its $1bn allocation from Scopia Capital Management, just over a year after committing the capital to the equity long-short hedge fund, according to Bloomberg.

Elliott Investment Management is backing 37Spruce Investment Partners with more than $100m in seed capital, supporting the launch of the new hedge fund founded by former Citadel portfolio manager Aaron Kessler, according to Bloomberg.

Aquamarine Fund, the investment vehicle managed by value investor Guy Spier, is winding down and returning capital to investors after more than two decades of operation, according to Investing.com.

Millennium Management is unwinding its separately managed account with Engineers Gate after more than three years, with the quant fund returning capital to the multi-strategy giant as part of an ongoing portfolio review, according to Bloomberg.

THE DATA CORNER

Data Insights & News

LookInsight AI published a white paper with original quantitative research on SEC insider trading signals. LookInsight ran 80+ controlled experiments against 12 months of real SEC Form 4 filing data covering ~4,000 active securities to determine which insider transaction patterns reliably predict forward stock returns.

• Key Insight - The signal is in the coordination, not the conviction.

Babbl Labs introduced YouTube Extended data set in 2025 for both Systematic Hedge Funds and LLM training. In 2026 Babbl Labs introduced YouTube Tripwire for discretionary traders.

• Discretionary traders receive a custom delivery of Company & Executive Monitoring, Trends & Narrative Detection, and Brand & Competitive Intelligence in real-time to their desktop.

• Example: D-Wave stock drops -30% on Jan 13th following Zuckerberg comments on Joe Rogan on Jan 10th “still a decade-plus out from [quantum] being a very useful paradigm”.

ExtractAlpha announced the launch of its Analyst Model Global, an expansion of the Analyst Model, that delivers a globally consistent stock selection signal across the US, EMEA, APAC, and the Americas. Analyst Model Global converts sell-side analyst forecasts into a predictive alpha signal by combining ExtractAlpha’s proprietary TrueBeats surprise predictions with detailed analyst revisions, ratings changes, and post-earnings announcement effects. 

Financial AI and TradeStation announced a partnership to integrate Financial AI's Super Analyst into the TradeStation platform -- allowing TradeStation traders to create strategies, back-test them, optimize for returns and auto deploy those trades all through a simple chat interface.

DataGo announced the integration of Forum T, an emerging platform that is rapidly gaining traction with individual investors in South Korea, in its upgraded RISA-Korea-V3 dataset, significantly adding coverage and providing a more complete picture of evolving retail investor dynamics. 

IkyaData announced the launch of a product that allows connecting data sources to an LLM without uploading them to a different platform allowing queries to be run across all data silos with a lot lower engineering and maintenance costs.

BCM Strategy announced the launch of its broad range of global macro policy risks and opportunities data feed for GenAI deployments. It’s available as a twice daily tickerized json file with fully structured official sector language data in context. Currently tagged for issues related to energy and climate policy, trade policy, digital currency/tokenization policy, and monetary policy. Tokenized embeddings are available upon request.

EquiLend launched a new daily Predicted Short Interest metric, calculated using a machine learning model trained on EquiLend's securities finance data set. Traditional U.S. short-interest data is backward-looking — by the time figures are released, positions have already shifted. EquiLend's Predicted Short Interest filters out non-directional lending flows to isolate true directional short demand, delivering an AI-derived view of current short exposure without the lag.

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