Japan, a far east island country, sits on the boundary of four tectonic plates, with 10 times the population density of the US but a third of its arable land. This resource scarcity and deadly earthquakes make the Japanese meticulous and risk-averse. The country's alternative data market may give a similar impression: lagging and conservative. While this statement may have been true a few years ago, the data market has been growing since COVID-19, shaping a new landscape that is worth exploring.

Central banks around the world have been raising rates to tackle inflation. Further increases are expected until the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, this has driven investor interest in analyzing central bank sentiment to anticipate monetary policy changes. In this report, we summarise the data landscape of vendors that offer central bank analytics to determine hawkish/dovish sentiment.

We reflect on an area of alternative data that has recently seen increased interest from data buyers: emerging markets. We utilise our position in the industry as well as our own proprietary metadata, to look at the alternative data landscape in this relatively obscure region.

In this Intelligence report, we conduct an overview of the POS transactional data market. Further, we provide intelligence on potential market entries to the space and how those may impact the market.