Volatility Wisdom of Social Media Crowds

The Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter 2017, Vol. 43, No. 2: pp. 136-151

In this article, the authors provide new evidence on the usefulness of investor sentiment extracted from social media by taking advantage of a new data source covering a more comprehensive social media sphere. They use a unique dataset of social anomaly scores (SAS) to assess the volatility wisdom of crowds and develop trading strategies constructed using social-media-based market volatility sentiment. Using market prices of the VIX-related (CBOE Volatility Index) exchange-traded products, the authors find that these strategies economically outperform a benchmark, while taking into account commissions and management fees.