Blogs as Indicators of Sentiment

October 24, 2007 |

Our pal Finbar is reporting today that many banks are issuing policy statements asking employees to refrain from making comments on blogs.  I don’t know if this is limited to the UK  or also prevelent here in the States as well.  From talking to many friends and colleagues at big banks here, I understand that many employees are already restricted from visiting many social media type web sites such as Facebook.  This is too bad.

Finbar makes the keen insight that “Markets live on rumour, denial and false hopes and blogs are the best way to get a feel for the true market sentiment.”  I believe the same and I know there are a number of companies out there who are attempting to capture, qualify and quantify that sentiment to advantage.  Does any body know which firms these are?  I’d like to get a better handle on how they do this and how accurate their indicators are.

As Finbar points out,  ”the markets are happy at the moment but the blogs are not; market corrections take time.”
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