Peering Into Peer Selection: Quantifying Company Similarity

Mar 15, 2019

Peer selection plays a central role in many aspects of finance — including valuation, financial and competitive analysis, risk and portfolio modeling and ESG scoring and alpha generation. One common method of peers identification is industry classification, such as the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®). Here we ask if it’s possible to identify and measure relationships between companies from a systematic analysis of various types of data, including fundamentals, news and the text in company filings, and whether this data can help us better understand company relationships and the risks they may bring.