Well, even somebody who knows the bare minimum about finances understands that currently, the market is struggling. The first response to the pandemic outbreak happening last March was losses and panic. The S&P 500 index fell by over 30{bce2ac57dae147ae13b811f47f24d80c66c6ab504b39dda4a9b6e8ac93725942} during the course of one month, and Dow Jones dropped by 3,000 in a single day. The government’s bonds also plummeted, and the whole world was like a child in the fog. In the volatile times, Nowcasting and Alternative Data suddenly became needed. But why?
The dramatic turn caused big trouble for central banks, which had to adjust their policies to the unpredictable and lightning-fast-changing conditions. There was no data to back them up, as the tools used by the committees to analyze their further movement are all backwards-looking. These are consumer sentiment indexes or GDP (gross domestic product) figures, for instance.
So how were the central banks possibly able …