The excess return of a strategy above its benchmark - the edge attributable to skill or information rather than market exposure.
Alpha is the return a strategy earns over and above what its benchmark delivered, isolating the part that comes from skill or an informational edge rather than simply being exposed to the market. Systematic and quantitative desks pursue it by finding information others do not yet have, or by acting on shared information faster and more precisely.
Alpha is perishable. A genuinely predictive signal attracts capital, and as more participants trade it, the edge erodes and eventually disappears - which is why the freshness and differentiation of a data source matter so much. Fresh, well-sourced alternative data is one place new alpha comes from, and the reason its value decays the moment it becomes widely available.
A live evaluation measures EdgeOrigin against your coverage requirements: decision-ready real-time data, delivery latency into your systems, and record-level provenance.