PNAS QnAs with NAS member and chemist Shaul Mukamel.
New Research In
Physical Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Contributed by H. Eugene Stanley, December 31, 2013 (sent for review August 6, 2013)
Significance
Internet search data may offer new possibilities to improve forecasts of collective behavior, if we can identify which parts of these gigantic search datasets are relevant. We introduce an automated method that uses data from Google and Wikipedia to identify relevant topics in search data before large events. Using stock market moves as a case study, our method successfully identifies historical links between searches related to business and politics and subsequent stock market moves. We find that the predictive value of these search terms has recently diminished, potentially reflecting increasing incorporation of Internet data into automated trading strategies. We suggest that extensions of these analyses could help draw links between search data and a range of other collective actions.
Abstract
Technology is becoming deeply interwoven into the fabric of society. The Internet has become a central source of information for many people when making day-to-day decisions. Here, we present a method to mine the vast data Internet users create when searching for information online, to identify topics of interest before stock market moves. In an analysis of historic data from 2004 until 2012, we draw on records from the search engine Google and online encyclopedia Wikipedia as well as judgments from the service Amazon Mechanical Turk. We find evidence of links between Internet searches relating to politics or business and subsequent stock market moves. In particular, we find that an increase in search volume for these topics tends to precede stock market falls. We suggest that extensions of these analyses could offer insight into large-scale information flow before a range of real-world events.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: ccurme{at}bu.edu or hes{at}bu.edu.
Author contributions: C.C., T.P., H.E.S., and H.S.M. designed research; C.C., T.P., H.E.S., and H.S.M. performed research; C.C., T.P., H.E.S., and H.S.M. analyzed data; and C.C., T.P., H.E.S., and H.S.M. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1324054111/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Search behavior semantics before market moves
More Articles of This Classification
Physical Sciences
Applied Physical Sciences
Related Content
Cited by...
- Predicting the impact of urban flooding using open data
- The dynamics of information-driven coordination phenomena: A transfer entropy analysis
- Social signals and algorithmic trading of Bitcoin
- The advantage of short paper titles
- Modelling human mobility patterns using photographic data shared online
- Quantifying crowd size with mobile phone and Twitter data
- Adaptive nowcasting of influenza outbreaks using Google searches
Similar Articles
You May Also be Interested in
Researchers report links between warming and predator-prey interactions in the Arctic and suggest that predator activity can influence carbon and nitrogen dynamics in the Arctic, but that warming may alter or reverse such effects.
Image courtesy of Modman/Pixabay.
A study finds that individuals with major depressive disorder had lower blood levels of acetyl-L-carnitine (LAC) than healthy controls, suggesting that LAC might aid the diagnosis of severe, trauma-associated depression.
Image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures/Pixabay.
A study explores historical fire activity associated with bison hunting by indigenous groups in North America, and suggests that fire use by indigenous hunters might have amplified the effect of climate variability on fire activity in the North American Great Plains.
Lauren Schiebelhut describes natural selection following sea star wasting disease.
