Big money investors have always sought an edge. Everything from star traders to fast computers to unique analysis can give a big hedge fund an advantage over competitors. The latest battleground is data. Investors are vying for new data sets that their competitors don't have, or haven't thought of using. These can range from the basic credit-card sales information to satellite data that tracks shipping routes, and parsing this kind of data for trading signals has been called "the future of investing." The industry providing this to the funds has sprung up amid an explosion in obtainable data over the past decade.