Prattle Analytics

Prattle Analytics operates as a financial data analytics firm, specializing in the quantification of market-moving language from official communications. The company was founded in 2013 by former academics Dr. Evan Schnidman and Bill MacMillan. Schnidman, who served as CEO, has a Ph.D. from Harvard University and was a faculty member at Brown University, specializing in political economy and leveraging AI to analyze financial markets. MacMillan, the CTO, is an experienced data scientist and former professor who has conducted extensive research on government finance. Their combined academic backgrounds in economic forecasting, textual analytics, and the mathematics of finance formed the foundation of the company, aiming to replace guesswork in financial analysis with actionable data.

The firm's core business involves providing predictive sentiment data derived from central bank and corporate communications. Its clientele consists of portfolio managers, research analysts, hedge funds, mutual funds, and other financial services professionals. Prattle's business model centers on selling this quantitative data, which did not exist in this form prior to the company's inception. The data is delivered to clients through various formats, including an integrated API and an intuitive user dashboard.

Prattle's service utilizes a proprietary platform that employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to analyze unstructured content. This system evaluates communications such as corporate earnings calls, press releases, and central bank announcements to generate analytics that measure sentiment and predict market impact. A key feature is the creation of a unique lexicon for each of the approximately 3,000 publicly traded companies and 15 central banks it covers. The platform algorithmically maps the historical relationship between a company's specific language and its corresponding stock market activity to score new communications. This allows asset managers to understand and anticipate market movements, strengthen investment theses, and inform trading strategies. In May 2019, Prattle Analytics was acquired by Liquidnet, a global institutional investment network, to expand Liquidnet's AI-driven analytics capabilities. Both Schnidman and MacMillan initially remained with the company to oversee its operations post-acquisition.

Keywords: sentiment analysis, financial analytics, central bank communications, corporate earnings calls, natural language processing, machine learning, predictive analytics, investment research, quantitative data, market impact analysis, textual analytics, fintech, unstructured data analysis, automated research, financial data, portfolio management tools, Evan Schnidman, Bill MacMillan, Liquidnet, equities analytics