Investors might be seeing nothing, but red in the capital markets, but on the flip side, it’s opening up the pathways for innovation. One company, Anodot, launched a public service that involves an analytics dashboard that uses machine learning to monitor locally reported COVID-19 cases, and then sends an alert to users when data from a certain region changes drastically.
“During the past couple of days, a number of our employees voiced concerns over the growth of the virus in their home cities around the world. We began using our own machine learning algorithms to track it, and quickly realized that lending the use of our technology to the global public is the minimum we can do to help during this very difficult time,” said David Drai, CEO and Co-Founder, Anodot. “We will continue to look for other potential insights we can offer and hope the information will aid people’s decisions, as so many of us are grappling with whether commuting to work, traveling or attending large events puts ourselves and our families at risk.”
Based on an Inside Big Data report, here’s what the company has identified thus far:
- China is on its way to containing the virus if the numbers from the country are correct.
- Per the report, “while Italy and South Korea have an overall similar number of confirmed cases, South Korea has managed to reduce the infection rate over the last week, while the rate in Italy is still increasing. South Korea also has a much lower mortality rate (0.68%) vs. Italy (~5%), which may be due to having implemented widespread testing.”
More innovation comes as virus containment remains a high priority. As such, investors looking for a broad ETF play in disruptive technology can look at the ARK Innovation ETF (NYSEArca: ARKK). The actively-managed ETF seeks to provide investors with:
- Exposure to Innovation: Aims for thematic multi-cap exposure to innovation across sectors. ARK believes the securities held in ARKK present the best risk-reward opportunities from ARK’s innovation-based themes.
- Growth Potential: Aims to capture long-term alpha+ with a low correlation of relative returns to traditional growth strategies and negative correlation to value strategies.
- Diversification: Offers a tool for diversification due to little overlap with traditional indices. It can be a complement to traditional value/growth strategies.
- Research: Combines top-down and bottom-up research in its portfolio management to identify innovative companies and convergence across markets.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Provides a lower-cost alternative to mutual funds with true active management in an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that invests in rapidly moving themes.
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