How do you sell a technical research subscription to a hedge fund/bank?

To be honest, you are fighting an uphill battle.

First of all, fewer and fewer people on both sell side and buy side are looking at technical analysis. primarily because the new generation of traders does not believe in it. Most technical analysis aficionados have already retired and people replacing them are either more macro or quant driven.

Then there is a problem of reputation - if you are a superstar it's a much easier sell then if you are a startup. It's a chicken and egg problem, it's hard to get clients without reputation and it's hard to get reputation without exposure.

Finally, even if someone looks at the technical analysis type stuff, most people don't want it standalone, but rather want it coupled with some macro musings, sentiment etc. If it's a pure "200-day moving average is here" publication, you might want to sprinkle it with some fluff.

If you have something concrete and truly actionable that can be backtested you can try selling it to quant funds - 3rd party signals are en vogue these days. It's a different business, but you can probably get more than 300 dollars a month for it.
 
We use two - what I'll call alt data products and both of them knocked on our door. So certainly shoe leather if you are in a financial center.
An alternative, if you have some good stuff, is to align yourself as an add-on with a primary vendor. The nice thing about vendors is their sales teams frequently like to add choices to widen their base.
I wouldn't sweat price yet as you are - most likely - going to be giving it away for a time, but do have a plan in place for pricing. Reward early adopters and leverage out any industry experience you team has.

Shows and alt data conferences are a possibility, but they ain't cheap.

A lot will depend on where you are based. NYC, Chicago and San. Fran. you can usually find a show or event every week. Spend a few dollars with a branding manager and start creating releases into the financial press.

Everybody thinks they are a branding expert, but few are - most traders have few branding skills. A good brand manager will have you on CNBC and Bloomberg and in the financial press in very short order.
 
SLE - thank you for your kind and detailed replies- actually we are doing a lot more than moving averages - rating strength strengths, evaluating sentiment extremes, identifying very strong candlestick patterns - not some of the usual stuff...we have a subset of signals with exact entry and exit details (pure signals as they were known 10 years ago)


we are short on time to get the clients - need to get them fast....how much do you think a press release into a decent financial paper would cost?


what do you think is the fastest way to get a few professional clients - we cannot wait a few months to get them...we might rebrand as the institutional technical research service for the retail trades - and start getting the retails but I would not wish to go that way as the service is rather complex...would need a lot of support.



we have been offered to take part in the alternative data sow in NY - cannot budget that now.
 
Just to name a few - a lot depends on your geography and in some countries, this group has some commonality of marketing. If you go out to the net you'll probably find well over a hundred. A handful of the banks and many agency brokers provide data and "idea" platforms.

Would need to know a lot more about your product and geography to give you some more focused targets, but again I would spend some money on a financial branding guru who would know where to start.

No substitute for branding budget other than knocking on doors.

 
thank you - can soemone give an approximate budget to get ourselves to some of these platforms - we will surely contact them but what is the expected median budget?
 
In 2005, Citigroup eliminated their inhouse TA dept that was led by Louise Yamada, a high-profile technical analyst. Citigroup publicly stated this was the result of a general cost reduction action, but the backstory is that Yamada's team was making recommendations to go neutral (to cash) or short. This was infuriating to the Citigroup sales team that was selling long-only investments. Guess who won that battle?

The point here is that honest TA is just as happy to provide short signals as long signals. So if you're prospects are financial instituions with mostly long-only assets, they are not going to be enthusiatic about short or neutral recommendations that are routinely part of a TA methodology.
 
For what it's worth, I use a ton of alt data vendors (paying over a 50k a year for the feeds), but I have declined to use even more. These are guys that come and claim to have actual predictive power based on X non-market data (text mining, cookies from sites etc). In terms of research, the threshold is even higher, so you have to distinguish yourself somehow.
 
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