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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Web Search Queries Can Predict Stock Market Volumes
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Stefano Battiston
  • I Bordino
  • G Caldarelli
  • M Cristelli
  • A Ukkonen
  • I Weber
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title PLoS ONE
Publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1932-6203
Volume 7
Number 7
Page Range e40014
Date 2012
Abstract Text We live in a computerized and networked society where many of our actions leave a digital trace and affect other people’s actions. This has lead to the emergence of a new data-driven research field: mathematical methods of computer science, statistical physics and sociometry provide insights on a wide range of disciplines ranging from social science to human mobility. A recent important discovery is that search engine traffic (i.e., the number of requests submitted by users to search engines on the www) can be used to track and, in some cases, to anticipate the dynamics of social phenomena. Successful examples include unemployment levels, car and home sales, and epidemics spreading. Few recent works applied this approach to stock prices and market sentiment. However, it remains unclear if trends in financial markets can be anticipated by the collective wisdom of on-line users on the web. Here we show that daily trading volumes of stocks traded in NASDAQ-100 are correlated with daily volumes of queries related to the same stocks. In particular, query volumes anticipate in many cases peaks of trading by one day or more. Our analysis is carried out on a unique dataset of queries, submitted to an important web search engine, which enable us to investigate also the user behavior. We show that the query volume dynamics emerges from the collective but seemingly uncoordinated activity of many users. These findings contribute to the debate on the identification of early warnings of financial systemic risk, based on the activity of users of the www.
Free access at DOI
Digital Object Identifier 10.1371/journal.pone.0040014
Other Identification Number merlin-id:10144
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