Marex Spectron, a global commodities broker and research house, has formed a joint-venture with Earth-i, a specialist ‘New Space’ technology provider, to develop and distribute a range of analytical tools.
Working alongside Marex Spectron’s award winning Market Analytics division run by Dr Guy Wolf (pictured), the joint-venture will initially focus on the copper market, combining Earth-i’s very high-resolution satellite imagery and video analytics with Marex Spectron’s datasets to produce end-to-end analytics and insight products.
Earth-i is at the forefront of an era known as New Space, driven by commercial and governmental organisations wanting to use high-quality, timely images and video from space to improve investment and trading decisions, monitor their assets more cost effectively, track changes or activities in critical locations – and predict future events with more certainty.
Marex Spectron’s Nanolytics product processes over 20 billion pieces of data each day to generate real-time measures of demand-supply balances in derivative markets. Having been in operation since 2012, it is a recognised leader in commodity derivative data analytics.
Dr Guy Wolf, Marex Spectron’s Global Head of Market Analytics, says: “We are always assessing new ways to provide clients with additional insight into the metals world and this venture with Earth-i is a highly exciting development. Traders today are overwhelmed with data and information, so the challenge is how to filter and convert that into something relevant. Earth-i has access to a unique set of images and their expertise in image recognition technology makes them an ideal partner. The benefit of being able to provide real-time comparisons of the analysis from both the physical and derivative world is huge. We are delighted to be involved in the development of this product.”
In January Earth-i launched the VividX2 satellite, the technology prototype for its Vivid-i constellation. Vivid-i will be the first commercial constellation in the world able to provide full-colour, full-motion video monitoring patterns of life on Earth. In addition to video and still images from its VividX2 satellite, Earth-i sources still images from a range of satellites including the DMC3, KOMPSAT and SuperView Constellations.
Paul Majmader, Commercial Director for Earth-i, says: ““This joint venture will deliver a valuable information product combining the timely delivery of analysed satellite imagery with a focus on clear and specific market indicators. These products will be designed to complement existing market information sources and add a new dimension to trading decisions.”
“Location-based data from space is the new frontier in big data analytics,” adds John Linwood, CTO at Earth-i. “Combining our technology and expertise with Marex Spectron’s data and deep knowledge of the metals markets provides an outstanding opportunity to develop a truly unique, market-leading product.”
