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Cotton Slips to Close Mixed on Wednesday

Nasdaq Stocks
3 days 12 hours ago
Cotton futures closed the midweek session, with contracts up 15 to 21 points in the front months and down 2 to 35 in the deferreds. Crude oil was up $1.03 per barrel on the session, with the US dollar index $0.326 higher. The weekly Crop Progress report showed 82% of...
Barchart

Nat-Gas Prices Retreat as Warm US Temps Curb Heating Demand

Nasdaq Stocks
3 days 12 hours ago
November Nymex natural gas (NGX26 ) on Wednesday closed down -0.085 (-2.59%). Nat-gas prices fell from a 3-month nearest-futures high on Wednesday and settled sharply lower after forecasts for above-normal US temperatures sparked long liquidation in nat-gas futures. The Commodity Weather Group said Wednesday that it expects above-average temperatures to...
Barchart

‘Like having an analyst in your pocket’: This macroeconomic data platform helps you follow the global money

Fast Company
3 days 13 hours ago

Trillions of dollars flow from governments and organizations across the globe every single year, and the money can be nearly impossible to accurately track.

A new data platform, however, is trying to make it easier.

The Development Finance Observatory, which launches on Wednesday, gives users the ability to access tons of disparate data sources and make analyses using plain language.

For instance, you might want to compare the debt paid by one country to another over the past 15 years, adjusted for inflation—an analysis that was possible before, but could require significant time and resources.

The project is an initiative from One Data, part of the nonprofit One Campaign, with support from Google.org and the Rockefeller Foundation’s public charity, RF Catalytic Capital. It was built on Google’s Data Commons.

The tool’s real magic, says David McNair, managing director at One Data, is the ability to pull data into it from a host of sources and get an idea of where money is going, and where it may be getting lost in the mix.

“Finance flows are a very fragmented world,” he says, adding that if someone wants to analyze GDP numbers, they may get the data from the International Monetary Fund, but if they want inflation data, they may need to get it from somewhere else.

“The platform standardizes it all in a knowledge graph; you can ask a question and get an answer,” he adds. “If you’re a finance minister, a funder in the U.S., or a journalist, you can find where the money is going quickly.”

‘Only scratching the surface’

The platform’s primary builder, Jorge Rivera, senior director of data and product at One Data, says the project took almost a year to put together, and that “what you see on the site is only scratching the surface.”

Rivera says that more and more data sources will be pulled into the platform in the years ahead. The main goal is to allow users to build on top of it: “We want users to find utility in the infrastructure we’ve built,” he says.

Overall, the data includes 100,000 indicators and more than 90 finance and development datasets, with more to come.

Additionally, One Data is releasing a library of AI agent skills to help navigate and analyze the data and platform. It’s like having an “analyst in your pocket,” Rivera says, and can help speed up data analysis, and, hopefully, allow for better decision-making. 

“We’ve taken a process that could’ve taken several people and months of work, and it can now be done in 10 minutes,” he says.

Sam Becker