Using Forge Data in private market investing

Investors often ask where is the market? Forge Data is a comprehensive data solution for private market investing, and a leading source of same-day pricing information for private company investors. Howe Ng, Head of Data & Analytics at Forge, walks through the key features of the Forge Data platform.

Transcript

Howe NgHead of Data & Analytics, Forge

Being a data person, I have seen many private data offerings in this space. I would say a key feature of Forge Data is in the way data and insights are curated and structured.

It is intuitive and informative to both public and private investors. So, starting at a macro level, investors can get a snapshot of how private market sectors are performing through our Sectors Insights page.

Now, as a previous public market investor, I always want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing before diving deeper into names with specific sectors. Now, what is unique about our platform is that investors can observe liquidity and performance metrics across private market sectors made possible by the trade and pricing data that we curate.

When it comes to specific companies, you can see the full range of pricing data such as bids and asks, volume weighted prices, funding round prices, and mutual fund marks to conduct research, generate new ideas, and formulate or enhance your investment strategies.

Now, if you want to dig in further, you can look at a deeper set of pricing data on specific companies - to inform your view of price discovery, liquidity, valuation, and even relative comparison to public names. Take Dataminr, for instance. It is a unicorn name in the data intelligence sector. Most investors can only see in public sources that its last primary price was $44 a share in early 2021.

But with data from Forge Intelligence, you can observe the continuous price discovery post-2021 through trade, volume, and other market indicators in the secondary market. In addition, we also provide the pricing data points from mutual fund marks. So, you can see how institutional investors are valuing the name over time. And as you know, mutual funds are usually associated with the way institutional investors express their view.

Now, if you want to compare Dataminr to one of its public peers, such as Splunk, you can do that as well, because we do have public equity pricing datasets in our data offering.

About the Author

Howe Ng is Head of Analytics and Investment Solutions at Forge Global. Prior to joining Forge, Howe spent 16 years with BlackRock where he led Production Innovation for the firm’s iShares ETF business and held key roles in the Systematic Active Equity Portfolio Management team. Read more from Howe.

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Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors. An investment in private company securities is highly speculative, involving a high degree of risk, and investors should be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities. Each investment also carries its own specific risks and investors should conduct their own, independent due diligence regarding the investment, including obtaining additional information about the company, opinions, financial projections and legal or investment advice. Accordingly, investing in private company securities is appropriate only for those investors who can tolerate a high degree of risk and do not require a liquid investment. Past performance Is not indicative of future results.