State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT) today announced the recent acquisition of its long-term partner, PriceStats, the leading provider of daily inflation statistics derived from digitally-sourced prices for millions of consumer products across the world.
Founded in 2011, PriceStats’ proprietary methodology collects price data for millions of products sold by more than 1,500 retailers around the world, offering insights into inflation trends and purchasing power that complement traditional government indicators. Academic research has demonstrated that online prices provide an effective leading indicator and signal of inflation trends. The offering has been a foundational component of the State Street Markets research platform since 2011 and is widely used by institutional investors, economists, and central banks.
PriceStats will become part of State Street Data Intelligence, which provides clients with proprietary data and insights to better inform investment decision making. In addition to PriceStats’ inflation measures, the Data Intelligence suite also includes the State Street Private Capital Indices, a suite of benchmarks and analytics derived from more than $6 trillion in proprietary data covering private equity and private credit designed to support the construction and benchmarking of private equity and credit portfolios.
“Accurate and actionable measurement of economic activity increasingly requires the collection and analysis of large unstructured data sets. The recent period of rapidly changing inflation has demonstrated the need for near-real-time data, which requires a tech-driven, digital solution," said Will Kinlaw, head of State Street Data Intelligence. “The PriceStats platform is best in class and from this strong foundation we will launch a range of advanced, low-latency economic indicators around prices, employment, and other key variables."
“Inflation has recently become a key challenge for many economies around the world,” said Pilar Iglesias, co-founder of PriceStats. “For 15 years, PriceStats has led the way in developing methods that help investors navigate today’s macroeconomic environment with a differentiated approach. Joining State Street is an important milestone for PriceStats and highlights the value of the partnership we have built with State Street over the years.”
PriceStats co-founder Alberto Cavallo, the Thomas S. Murphy Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, will remain as an academic partner of State Street Associates, State Street's longstanding institute for partnerships with leading academics. He will also partner with State Street to develop additional products focused on high-speed measurement of the real economy.