The Twitter Fund - Social Media Moving Financial Markets By Kwasi Fraser

We are witnessing a collective voice of humanity online, with the unique ability to move products, services, and issues on the social web. In essence, the social web has provided the platform for all humanity to freely engage in the exchange of thoughts and ideas about any given topic. Typing a simple query on a social media search engine www.sampoint.com delivers individual comments from this collective voice of humanity online. However, it is yet to be seen if this collective voice is able to influence the financial mar ets. !s an investment professional with over "# years investing in stoc s and various derivatives, I firmly believe that emotions, greed and fear, have the greatest impact on investment decisions. In the mid to late "$$%&s we witnessed how mass emails and faxes exploited those emotions and were able to produce significant short term gains and losses for many mar et securities. Today the authors of those emails and faxes are establishing their presence on the greatest publishing platform in the world' the social websites, and message boards. These authors are (oined by many other individual and professional investors voicing their thoughts and ideas about targeted financial securities and other investments. The possibility of using social media comments to drive investment decisions is not going unrecogni)ed. It was recently announced that a new Hedge *und, affectionately named the +Twitter *und+, will launch in *ebruary, ,%"" and will leverage the sentiments of Twitter comments to drive investment decisions. This new fund will be officially mar eted to clients as the -erwent !bsolute .eturn *und, and has already attracted at least /,# million in investments, according to the fund+s manager 0aul Hawtin. In addition, it is claimed that the fund&s management is in discussions to hire 1ohn Bollen, an Indiana 2niversity professor who has championed academic theories lin ing mar et performance to Twitter moods or sentiments. The 3Twitter *und& has laid the foundation for others to follow. !s the influence of social media comments increases, I firmly believe there will be more underta ings in the investment community to leverage that collective voice of humanity online to drive investment decisions.