The Signal in ‘Small Data’ – StockTwits Adds Two New Social Signals: Stocks and People

‘Big Data’ is the shizzle in the media. I have a strong belief that ‘Small Data’ can offer more signal for the average investor and trader. I see it everyday with my eyes and we have been hunkered down building tools that turn Stocktwis ‘inside out’ and showcase sectors, tickers and people as they surface. People should be able to come to Stocktwits and get different views of our data.

What I have been thinking about most recently is volume. As social means more and more to me in my investing, I have less confidence in the old measurements of market volume. The share accounting, derivatives and too big too fail banks are making volume measurements less reliable. That leaves me with price. I will always trust price. To augment both price and volume though now is the third dimension…people. You don’t need the mass of people either. You need the right people. It works for me and I am sure there is plenty of signal if you use price and volume and follow the right people.

Our continued goal at Stocktwits is to offer great products, tools and a platform that makes it easy and fun for investors and traders to share, journal and discover.

Back to the launch…

Last month we launched The StockTwits Social Heatmap which offers members dynamic visualizations of message volume across sectors and individual stocks over 4 time frames within a 24 hour period.

The Social Heatmap provides a nice perspective of social momentum over shorter time frames and is now featured daily on CNBC’s Fast Money Halftime.

This morning, we are launching two new Social Signals, one focused on Stocks and the other on People.

Social Stocks Signals

Social Stocks Signals provides more detail regarding which tickers and industries are gaining and losing social momentum over longer time periods.

The stocks module covers unusual stock message volume over 1, 7, 30 and 90 days, displays the 10 stocks gaining and losing the most momentum and lists the percentage increase/decrease over the selected time period.

The Industries module provides similar data for the stock market industries. We have also included a large collection of new industry streams that allows our members to access message streams that include all messages tagged with tickers within the given industry.

You can check out the new Drug Related Products and Aluminum industry streams – the largest percentage gainer and loser industries respectively over the past 30 days.

Social Stocks Signals provides our members granularity in terms of discovering which stocks and industries are gaining and losing social momentum and allows them to make fascinating inferences from the data.

For example, note the huge increase in momentum in two biotech stocks focusing on experimental obesity drugs in the graphic below ($ARNA & $VVUS are 1 and 2 over 30 days. Clearly, velocity in this area is accelerating quickly.

Social People Signals

Social People Signals provides our community with a way to discover other members who are gaining popularity on StockTwits and who are popular in specific sectors.

The Gaining Popularity module displays StockTwits members who are of increasing interest to fellow members over 7 and 30 day periods. This feature, derived from a proprietary algorithm, is great for discovering who others are paying attention to whether they are new members who are awesome or regulars who are messaging smartly or have the hot hand.

The Popular People By Sector module is an amazing feature that allows our members to discover who the axes are within specific sectors.

Keep an eye out for more features coming soon and we hope you enjoy our latest additions to Social Signals!

Please let us know what you think and what other Signals features you would love to see, as our social data set continues to expand, in the comments section below or by emailing us directly at phil at stocktwits dot com.