Quantopian's community platform is shutting down. Please read this post for more information and download your code.
Back to Community
valuation of algorithms

anyone know how financial firms book their algos at on their balance sheets, and how does this compare to their market caps? I'm a new analyst and I've been asked to learn to valuate algos.

4 responses

Scott,

Just to clarify, you are asking how the intellectual property (IP) value of an algorithm is reflected in the public filings of a financial firm? E.g. how Goldman represents the value of their trading algorithms?

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian. In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

Yes, that is correct only I need to know for firms in the UK. I'm not sure where to begin. Thanks Scott

Sarbanes-Oxley requires PCAOB accounting standards which use cost-basis... so you I don't think you want to know how a US firm like Goldman represents the value of their trading algo, but instead a private US firm or off-shore firm.

Scott,

According to our controller, internally developed software is an intangible asset. I took a look at Barclays (searched for most recent 20F, where they note that they use IAS standard 37: http://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/standard37

As Taylor suggested above, UK firms appear to use cost based valuation for the algorithms.

thanks,
fawce