Ask HN: Social aspect to financial markets and stocks

[verdatel]

I know there's been some thrusts into using sentiment and a social aspect to financial markets. Can somebody point me to these. I'd also love to see what people think can be done with crowd-sourced stock opinions or social feed sentiment based stock recommendations. I was thinking it is perhaps more useful to give negative recommendations or options rather than just buy/sell type output.

[murtza]

StockTwits is the biggest player I can think of in this space.

I like the idea of focusing on negative stock recommendations. There have been studies that show Wall Street research analysts have a positive bias in their recommendations because they do not want to ruin relationships (investment banking, capital markets) or potential relationships with those companies that they rate poorly. So, if you did a startup in this space, then you wouldn't have to worry about that.

[ricksta]

This company Derwent Capital seems to be able to generate quite a return with data mining twitter feeds. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8755587/Twitte...

[mrkmcknz]

The StockTwits API is great if you want to build a sentiment based tool.

Again as murtza said negative sentiments are often more correct than positive.

The only problem is when it comes to monetizing the thing, the hurdles in legal terms then become huge and costly.

[verdatel]

what are the legal hurdles you envisage? A simple recommendation based on social sentiment is what I'm thinking about.

[verdatel]

EDIT: Also.. just a quick market survey.. would you pay for this? Let's say a subscription-based service.. what would you pay for the capability to get sentiment about a stock ticker and related terms in a social media feed.

[murtza]

I think retail clients are not willing to pay for information. They are already overloaded with "free" information from so many different sources. I think you want to target institutional clients like hedge funds, who are more than willing to pay for information if it means they will have edge over their competitors.

[verdatel]

thats a great recommendation. Thanks murtza