Stocktwits Data Is Extremely Unique and Bring Me More Data Artists...Not Scientists

Good morning …

Life is good here as our renovated home on Coronado is near completion. I may be jinxing this because we are in the hands of Best Buy delivering appliances. My kingdom for a fridge and stove!

Ellen has been though customer support hell (more like fraud management) as they change dates and stress us out with conflicting emails about where the appliances we ordered SIX months ago might happen to be hiding out in their make believe ‘supply chain’.

Serenity now!

Onward…

I believe two things about data.

It is valuable if you know what to do with it…and

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything

As the world goes bonkers for AI, Machine Learning, LLM’s and ‘everything apps’ it is a good time to own unique data (the torturers will pay). I do not mean data on where people live or their net worth or their social security number or their location because I don’t really care personally and that is not why I started Stocktwits, but about what stocks, trends, industries are in/or not in the public consciousness. Specifically, what stocks are in/or not in the public consciousness of the people that love stocks and love talking about stocks all day long. This quote is not something I cooked up. My friend and great venture investor Fred Wilson said this about Stocktwits way back in 2008.

I am not a stock market data geek. I think a stock price is almost all the data you need to follow markets, but I am in the minority (thank goodness). Billions are spent yearly on data by Bloomberg, Factset, Reuters (and their customers) S&P, Banks, hedge funds, quant funds etc…to justify said stock prices in an ever ongoing circle jerk circle of financial life we call the public markets.

As a stock ‘price’ junkie, I was drawn to William O’Neil’s Investor’s Business Daily back when I got the investing bug in the 90’s. William - RIP - was an incredible innovator.

He invented the Relative Strength Ranking system that cemented an incredibly profitable data and media business. As simple as it sounds and as genius as it is in its simplicity, relatively few care to follow along, which is likely why it continues to work so well for the strict practitioners.

Way back in 2008 I hypothesized that it would be fascinating to own a certain set of stocks with both the highest price relative strength and the lowest Stocktwits followings. In 2008, we did not have enough data. Today, we surely do. I call this strategy/idea ‘untortured’ or ‘neglected exhaust data’ from the social signal. The lack of a following by an audience that talks about stocks all day long (which we have ranked for over 16 years by creating the ticker follow as an ‘opt in’) is a great signal.

I know…I know…just create an ETF already (hit me up if you want to do the data crunching for this with me and have a great name).

Here are three stocks from just the last few years that you have likely never heard of that have carried incredible price momentum are valued in the billions that get relatively no social interest as opposed to say current Wall Street darling Nvidia . Yes, Nvidia is an incredible company and incredible stock - which is why it has 460,000 Stocktwits followers watching the stream.

Here are three stocks that have crushed $NVDA stock performance since 2020 (price and volatility) and each has 4,000 or less followers TODAY.

$CELH, $SMCI $SYM

In 2023 it is easy to find a list of the highest relative price stocks…its not as easy to cross calculate which has the least social interest/following.

This is just one example of unique data that lies within Stocktwits in plain sight. Torture it as you please!

I won’t torture this data because I am not a data scientist. While some may call me stupid for giving away an easy idea that any programmer could use I am confident that few will do the work or even care.

No wonder data scientists are commanding huge salaries in the world we live in today. What I am bullish on are the data artists!

There is so much art, not just science to the data we are immersed in all day every day and we are in the early days of structured and unstructured social data as it relates to investing, stocks, prices and markets.

PS - I have long called the best technical analysts like JC Parets, Chris Kimble and Helene Meisler Chart Artists. Technical analysis is under appreciated because of bad marketing. Reading data is more art than science and technical analysts would be better off calling themselves chart artists.