OREANDA-NEWS. Today Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced the addition of EidoSearch Predictive Analytics and Mary Epner Retail Analysis (MERA) to its BofA Merrill Open Minds alternative research platform.

BofA Merrill Open Minds has been complementing the firm’s industry-leading proprietary research since 2007 by providing institutional clients access to highly specialized independent research, covering areas such as corporate integrity risk, federal legislation and regulation, litigation and many industry sectors. The addition of EidoSearch and MERA will expand the highly specialized independent research suite currently available on the platform.

Robert Nowicki, vice president in the Execution Services group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said, “The addition of EidoSearch and MERA reflects our investment in Open Minds and our goal to deliver the best independent research products to our clients. We are delighted to welcome them both to our platform.

“Open Minds also delivers benefits to our third-party providers. Both EidoSearch and MERA have team members who had worked at third-party providers that were on our platform in the past. Their experience working with us before, coupled with strong endorsements from our clients, meant they were excited to reap the benefits of marketing their research insights via our platform again.”

EidoSearch uses cutting-edge predictive analytics to quantify the impact of price, economic and market trends to project likely outcomes based on similar historic trends. These projections help identify actionable data points for idea generation, risk management and trade execution.

The provider analyzes patterns across equities, currencies, commodities, ETFs and indices on the scale of a billion pattern comparisons every day. It can also assist clients in better estimating risks and uncovering opportunities, and can function as an alert to project outcomes after extreme market events or price moves.

Nowicki said, “EidoSearch is a great addition to our Open Minds platform, and their approach to analyzing historical comps and generating return probabilities will be a valuable addition to our clients’ investment decision-making processes.”

“We are excited to be one of a select group of alternative research and information providers chosen for BofA Merrill Open Minds,” said Jeff Parker, chairman of EidoSearch and the founder of First Call and CCBN StreetEvents.

“By adding EidoSearch, BofA Merrill recognizes the need to gauge event outcomes and use statistics to better forecast returns and volatility that complement the fundamental research process. The bank’s global reach will help us further expand our leadership position in applying predictive analytics to financial data.”

MERA is a research provider that specializes in analyzing trends affecting the global retail sector, including luxury brands, discount retailers, department stores, malls and e-commerce retailers.

MERA has developed a systematic methodology to analyze retail trends, consumer drivers and brand implementation across regions and channels to create detailed, focused research on the sector. The platform offers the collective expertise of former retail executives, each with over 20 average years of experience, as its primary analyst base.

According to Nowicki, “MERA’s unique analytical approach and its inclusion of global e-commerce is a true differentiator for our clients.”

“I’m thrilled to be working with BofA Merrill to provide custom research on the top retail brands and sectors. Our unique approach, from the perspective of retail executives providing merchandising-based insight into demand drivers across retail, e-commerce and emerging markets, is a valuable complement to an equity analytic framework,” said Mary Epner, founder of the research provider.

“BofA Merrill is a wonderful partner and understands the importance of a wide variety of research in today’s equity market, and I’m honored to be part of their Open Minds third-party research platform.”

Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's largest financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small- and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 48 million consumer and small business relationships with approximately 4,800 retail banking offices and approximately 15,800 ATMs and award-winning online banking with 31 million active users and approximately 17 million mobile users. Bank of America is among the world's leading wealth management companies and is a global leader in corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business owners through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.