Thematic investing has become more common across institutional strategies — from sector rotation to long-term structural themes. But identifying which themes are genuinely gaining momentum versus which are just well-covered narratives is harder than it looks. By the time a theme is on the cover of a financial magazine, the edge is often gone.
Alternative data offers a different approach: instead of tracking analyst coverage or fund flows, you track the digital signal intensity of a theme directly — how search, social, news, and behavioral data around it are moving in aggregate. When multiple s