Bloomberg has again confirmed what was well known: algorithms scour Twitter daily, looking for material and content to trade. Now, in an attempt to further streamline and encourage this, Bloomberg is creating a Twitter stream specifically for finance and specifically for algorithms.
Bloomberg has figured out what most people in the trading community have known for years: that Twitter is an invaluable asset for traders and those in the financial industry. Not only are company disclosures made through the social media site, but “FinTwit”, as it as it is commonly known, is full of industry participants – ranging from analysts to investors to hedge fund managers – and they all like to use Twitter as a platform to provide their analysis, and best of all, they do it for free, handing over their content to Twitter in some vain hope of influencing others and/or acquiring transitory recognition and fame.
Prominent hedge fund managers like David Einhorn, Carl Icahn and Jeffrey Gundlach all are active Twitter users, sometimes using the platform to shoot out their thoughts on individual companies or their macro economic outlook. All of the financial media journalists are active on Twitter. Even CEOs and company executives are frequently quoted by their Tweets, as one electric car CEO found out last weekend.
Bloomberg started to cover tweets on the terminal back in 2013, confirming Twitter’s usefulness to finance professionals. Anybody that looks for news on a company may also be subjected to tweets related to the company, verbatim, as they appear on Twitter, from notable analysts and respected names in the industry.
Today, Bloomberg took its partnership with Twitter one step further.
The company announced on Wednesday morning that it will be providing a Twitter-specific financial newsfeed tailored to algorithms. In a press release dated Wednesday morning morning, the company noted:
Bloomberg announced today the expansion of its relationship with Twitter, launching a real-time feed of curated Twitter data, so that enterprise clients can incorporate the most financially relevant content into their trading algorithms. Built on the back of Bloomberg’s robust Natural Language Processing techniques and available through the company’s Event-Driven Feeds (EDF) product, the data allows financial firms to extract value by making sense of the over 500 million Tweets per day.
The use of Twitter for disclosing material company news has increased since 2013, when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provided guidance on doing so. Twitter also continues to be the service of choice for influential financial professionals to broadcast market-moving views. Yet, the financial industry struggles with the sheer volume of Twitter content, which can create a lag in market reaction and introduce unnecessary risks when making trading decisions.
Tony McManus, Bloomberg Enterprise Data CIO, said that “our customers tell us that Twitter data is a vital part of their information-driven trading strategies, helping them uncover early trends and changes in sentiment.”
He continued, “our Twitter EDF feed will help quantitative traders to capitalize on Twitter’s influence on the markets through constantly evolving curation methodologies. These include proprietary NLP modeling, coupled with Bloomberg’s reputation for data quality and the expertise of a world-class news organization.”
The official press release noted comments from Twitter, who seems to also finally be realizing that their platform is being used for breaking financial news:
We’re excited to expand our partnership with Bloomberg to deliver even more value from Twitter data for investment professionals,” said Bruce Falck, Twitter’s Revenue Product Lead. “People come to Twitter for breaking news, and this new, real-time Twitter data feed gives finance professionals an increased ability to find meaningful and relevant news with the speed, quality, and accuracy they expect from Bloomberg.”
Today’s announcement also follows news earlier this year of a partnership between Bloomberg and Twitter. Bloomberg would provide specific video news tailored only for users of Twitter. This came in the form of Tic Toc, which is live 24 hour streaming of news specifically for Twitter, although it appears to have failed to achieve the type of distribution and reach Bloomberg may have hoped for.
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This new addition not only ties the partnership closer together but it also further validates Twitter as an important mainstream source for financial insights and news.
Just this morning, industry expert Jeff Macke noted how he couldn’t believe that people had access to respected names in the industry – like noted short-seller Marc Cohodes – via Twitter for free:
It’s important to remember FinTwit has a scoreboard. Especially w/ equities. Stock price.
Most folks on any sort of Must Read list have been here long enough to go back and get a sense of their skills. @AlderLaneeggs tends to win. The fact you get him for free here is amazing.
— Jeff Macke (@JeffMacke) July 18, 2018
It has long been rumored that Twitter is the target of an acquisition. A cash rich Bloomberg may be a name that could make sense as an acquiror, but Twitter’s recent run up pushing its stock price to over $32BN has made the company significantly more expensive in the past few months, and it is unclear if even Bloomberg can afford that kind of scratch.
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