DataSwarm Markets processes social media messages about stocks and other assets as they occur, calculates the sentiment and publishes them in near-real time.
DataSwarm Markets near real time feed is aimed at for traders and analysts who are looking at short term effects, for example for looking at pre-market opening sentiment, and timing trades during the trading period, and comparing with stock price moves. The system also accumulates the sentiment history so users can see the trend of any one stock, and can see the comparative trend versus others. In addition, we show the fastest sentiment risers and fallers.
Our experience using social media to predict various events over the last few years, such as elections, company performance and stock price movements, is that conversation drives intent – for example to vote, buy, or some other predictable reaction. Stock buying and selling is well known to be a human reaction to news, not the news itself – “bears” and “bulls” are human reactions, and drive markets. Sentiment gives more information about this intent, in terms of strength and direction. But don’t just take our word for it, there is a significant amount of academic research that shows the correlation between social media discussion and stock prices, for reference we have a summary of academic and other research over here.