How social media sentiment can affect markets

On a daily basis over 140 million users of micro-blogging service - Twitter are generating a collective 340 million small text messages. This abundance of data contains a multitude of patterns hidden within. But can this data predict whether the stocks go up or down? Can it really assist traders on making calculated, informed and successful trades?

I think it is a fact that the media, both online and offline are able to influence the financial market and generate both positive and negative outcomes on market price. It is also said that investors are not the only subject to the sentiment of related news articles but also the public opinions.

The challenge is how to quantify such sentimental information to predict the movement of the stock markets, so say the researchers who mined the twitter data anyway. Continue reading "How social media sentiment can affect markets"