Social Media Listening

 Twitter and the SEC 

• Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure)

• Social media is increasingly a primary communication channel

Is it bad when the CEO of a company thinks his stock price is too high? Investors thought so after a tweet on May 1, 2020, from Musk that said “Tesla stock price is too high imo.” The stock lost 10% of its value that day as the price tumbled from $156.38 to $140.26. It rebounded a week later, but there may have been a few investors who didn’t enjoy that ride.

*Pre-split price

May 04, 2020	46.73	50.8	46.53	50.75	50.75	288,556,500
May 01, 2020	50.33	51.52	45.54	46.75	46.75	487,977,000
Apr 30, 2020	57.01	57.99	50.9	52.13	52.13	427,078,500

Musk tweeted “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” on Aug. 7, 2018, and Tesla’s shares shot up 6% in response.

But the Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t find it amusing. In a statement a month later, the government agency said Musk’s tweet was misleading and caused market disruption, and it made Musk and Tesla pay $40 million in fines as part of a settlement against him for securities fraud.

Aug 07, 2018	22.92	25.83	22.61	25.3	25.3	463,137,000
Aug 06, 2018	23.03	23.67	22.79	22.8	22.8	128,464,500

Opportunity

The financial industry has seen a progression in unstructured data sources available that  have potential for investment insight. An opportunity exists to leverage these 

non traditional sources to  provide useful information as well as provide tools to consume the increasing volume of traditional information.

Project Goal

Productivity:

Investigate productivity enhancement methods for traditional information sources.

Predictability:

Provide a process for investment professionals to extract information from non traditional sources that deliver valuable insight into companies and markets.

Discover the possibilities of extracting information related to financial markets by  evaluating tools  and techniques to help make sense of  the massive amounts of data.

Information Sources

Areas where investment research can use tools for Big Data analytics are:

Conversations & Disruptive Technologies – Find out what topics people are talking about and new technologies people are using

Consumer sentiment – In the business to consumer marketplace monitor the sentiment, velocity and volume of consumer posts

Pricing and Demand – Capture and report product pricing information and demand for products(e.g. Airline reservations)