Quadrant Adds Economic Data to eSignal, Unveils Excel Add-in

Quadrant provides around 400,000 global economic indicators covering 202 countries, captured directly from around 1,000 data sources, such as exchanges, central banks and government agencies, along with corresponding historical data and an economic calendar, via its website. The data is normalized between countries to deliver like-for-like information, and can be interrogated using “powerful” search and filtering tools, says founder and chief executive Dane Vrabac.

The vendor began talking to Interactive Data about integrating its data into the eSignal desktop in November, to be able to provide an additional source of fundamental content to eSignal clients, and went live as an add-on dataset in eSignal’s app store in April.

Quadrant offers two packages of data via eSignal: a free package including US data, US key economic indicators, and a US economic calendar; and a premium “Pro” package that includes global data, key indicators for all 202 countries, a global economic calendar, and the ability to customize datasets and set up notifications, priced at $99 per month. Currently, users can access all data on Quadrant’s website free of charge.
“Takeup has been pretty good…. We are seeing hundreds of new users coming through eSignal,” since going live on the platform, Vrabac says.

However, Vrabac—himself a former analyst at Morgan Stanley, the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission—says an Excel add-in is a basic requirement to attract an institutional user base, and will be priced as a premium service. “From my experience in banking, people do most of their work in Excel, cutting and pasting data into spreadsheets,” he says. “So anyone who is willing to pay for the data will want the Excel add-in.”

Add-in users can download data from Quadrant’s database into Excel, then display time-series data or charts for any chosen economic indicator. They can also search the database directly from Excel using a “robust” search function that delivers the same results as its online search tool, and is as fast as any competing product, Vrabac says.
Max Bowie