A new battlefield has emerged for Chinese Internet firms after players have started giving big data analysis aimed at helping in picking stocks, according to a Guangzhou Southern Weekly report.
With China's ongoing equity rally, various Web platforms such as Sina, Baidu and Alibaba's Ant Financial have partnered with investment firms to initiate equity funds venture operating online data analysis.
Big data has been allowing investors to monitor real-time developments more closely, compared with the traditional method of checking financial statements released by firms every quarter, an Ant Financial executive stated.
Currently, the Alibaba financial arm contributes to Bosera Fund Management's CSI big data 100 fund. It offers business climate indicators from various sectors, culling its analysis from transactions made via Alibaba's e-commerce portals such as Tmall and Taobao.
Bosera's CSI big data 100 reached a 41.48-percent return during this year's first quarter. Sources claim that the utilization of big data can help increase the return on funds by 30 percent.
A thorough research conducted by GF Securities, based on new reports about Shanghai Shenzhen CSI 300 Index on Baidu's online platform, also showed that an investor can have a 37.05-percent annual return.
Meanwhile, Sina has teamed up with China Southern Asset Management and has unveiled its own line of big data analysis based on financial data, blog posts and news that go through the site.
Sina's Weibo service is also seen as an advantage with its over 500 million users and its over 50,000 applications connection. The large figures create a whole map of data depicting the market's sentiment.
The China Southern Big Data 100 fund, launched on April 22, was fully subscribed, but with only 27.88 percent getting a stake.
Earlier, on April 10, four minutes after the GF Securities-Baidu partnership launched a second issuance of 500 million yuan worth of shares, the fund was also fully subscribed.
Though Internet giant Tencent is yet to enter the new battlefield for Chinese Internet firms--big data as a means of picking stocks--analysts said that it still has an edge with its existing stock mobile app, Portfolio, and its presence in social media via microblogs and its popular WeChat app.