Derwent Capital Markets, a London investment firm that has long been touting itself as the first social media-based hedge fund, has opened its doors.
The £25 milllion ($40.5 milion) hedge fund is basing investments on an analysis of 10% of the 10 million tweets sent daily. The firm applies trading algorithms and sentiment analysis to those tweets before making its bets. (We’ve written about why social media analysis makes financial sense.)
Derwent may be the first boutique investment firm to take this approach, but the idea of using information gleaned from social networks as a stock market predictor isn’t new. StockTwits, for instance, is a popular third-party Twitter app that provides a forum to discuss investment-related matters. Others in the space include Chart.ly and Covestor.
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