While a quant manager might look at that piece of data to determine how much U.S. consumers are spending, a stock-picker could use it to grill Wal-Mart executives about sales, said Ken Kroner, head of multi-asset strategies and head and chief investment officer of the scientific active equity group.

The difficulty is determining what data is relevant and what is noise, Kam said. "It's going to be a little like drinking water out of a fire hose," he said.

Active 2.0

BlackRock has assembled a working group of portfolio managers drawn from its quantitative scientific active group, its fundamental stock-pickers and its fixed income managers, to figure out how "big data" can help managers across the firm, Kroner said.

Its first project is an internal Web site where BlackRock's portfolio managers can search a word, company name or phrase and receive thousands of data bits, including earnings calls; analyst reports; word search analytics, video and audio clips.

For instance, by combing through BlackRock's data hub, managers discovered that the number of times that executives mentioned the word "Greece" in their earnings calls last quarter was the lowest since 2012.

That data allowed BlackRock managers to discount the potential risk of Greece leaving the European Union while other investors were selling shares on daily worries about a possible "Grexit," Kroner said.

Data like this adds another layer to traditional stockpicking, creating an approach that some say could be "Active 2.0."

Kroner knows the push into big data is not a panacea for active equity.
"Active management will always be at its core about the understanding of fundamentals, earnings growth rates and the like," Kroner said. "But big data does sure give us an edge over our competitors."

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