The Data Foundation — Where Financial AI Lives or Dies
Every AI financial system is built on data, and in finance the data is uniquely treacherous: expensive, fragmented, revised after the fact, survivor-biased, and riddled with subtle ways to accidentally see the future. Getting the data foundation right matters more than any model — a brilliant model on leaky or biased data is a confident path to losing money. This post is about the financial data landscape and the traps that make it the hardest, most decisive part of the work.
Every financial AI system lives or dies on its data, and financial data is uniquely treacherous: expensive, fragmented, revised, survivor-biased, and riddled with ways to accidentally see the future. The landscape (market, document, proprietary data) and the traps — lookahead, survivorship, point-in-time correctness — that make it the most decisive part. (Educational, not financial advice.)