Random Walk Financial
Random Walk Financial is an American independent research firm focused on identifying inflections in consumer trends. Headquartered in San Diego, California, Random Walk’s team of data scientists, data visualization specialists, and software engineers maintains a proprietary system that tracks, filters, and distills millions of emails from leading brands. Random Walk shares insights and analysis from their ensemble to leading institutional investors globally.
| Random Walk Financial | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2011 |
| Founder | Greg Robin |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, United States |
| Key people | Greg Robin |
| Industry | Financial research |
| Contact | http://ranwalk.com/ |
| Reference | [1] |
Overview
Random Walk was founded by Greg Robin in 2011. Greg Robin has a graduate degree in Computer Science with a focus in Distributed Systems. Prior to Random, Mr. Robin consulted for more than a dozen publicly traded companies on Search Engine Optimization. He previously was licensed with the Research Analyst Series 86, 87 General Securities Principal, Series 24 and Options Principal Series 4 during which he designed derivatives strategies for leading long/short funds.
Currently, Random Walk is focused on delivering the industry’s most robust quantitative insights into promotional trends. In partnership with Lucena Research, back testing revealed dramatically better than benchmark returns of 90% when Random Walk’s promotional insights are combined with fundamental factors.[2]
History
After consulting on a semi-exclusive basis for several leading hedge funds, Random Walk was established in 2011. Random Walk is best known for uncovering significant inflections in struggling brick and mortars stores as well as explosive growth in subscription based internet related businesses.
In 2017, they revealed JC Penney’s (JCP) turnaround strategy was failing based on explosive growth in steep discounting category of email promotions. Later in 2018, their ensemble revealed similar dramatic changes in how Macy’s (M) was communicating with past customers and leads. Their identification of this preceded an ensuing 60% drop in share prices and several quarters of earnings misses.
Random Walk was successful in revealing the inflection of one of 2018-2019’s top performers in Roku (ROKU) as their ensemble indicated rapid growth in new subscriber confirmations.
More recently, in summer 2019, Random Walk was successful in identifying the inflection in Children’s Place (PLCE) as their system captured and identified never sent before coupons accelerated rebates and dollar credits for their loyalty members.
Background
Random Walk has relationships with several consumer panels and has built a proprietary system using machine learning, natural language processing and other techniques to classify millions of emails blasted out to consumers translating the communication to investor intelligence.
Coverage
Random Walk maintains a history dating back to 2016 for nearly 200 brands and over 4 million total emails. This robust history enables real-time tracking of changes in how business communicate. Random Walk severely limits its client roster to prevent dilution and loss of investor edge.
Team
Random Walk Financial's team:[3]
- Greg Robin, founder
- Stephen McMurty, data scientist
- Tim Gillihan, forensic accountant
References
- ^ Crunchbase profile
- ^ Track record. Random Walk Financial.
- ^ Random Walk Financial official website