Digital Disruption

During my eight years as a professional derivatives trader I quickly learned that one of the most important predictors of success was being able to tap into the deal flow and information flow in order to make successful, rapid trading decisions.  There were so many sources of information and my trading success relied on finding the right information, talking to the right people and being able to synthesize the information rapidly.  This is the adrenal rush of trading where your success is tied to how quickly you can filter signal from the noise.

More than a decade later the Internet has democratized information sources and trading platforms. The average investor / day trader / speculator can now trade successfully without the need to access an expensive Bloomberg or Reuters terminal.

One of the most innovative Web 2.0 tools that has emerged in the past month is StockTwits. It’s a powerful mashup that uses Twitter’s global conversation as a very powerful source of information flow.  It elegantly filters the conversation and allows you to track your favorite stocks, listen in to the conversation that is happening around those stocks and add your own point of view.   It was developed by Soren Macbeth and Howard Lindzon.  Find them on Twitter here and here.

To contribute to the conversation one simply needs a Twitter account and add a “$” symbol in front of the ticker symbol you’re talking about in your tweets.  Stocktwits automatically tracks your tweets and categorizes them into the correct ticker stream.  For example, here’s a comment I made on $GM.

StockTwits also shows the most active contributors, the most active stock comments and provides external links to Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, WhaleWisdom and WikiInvest.

Bottom line:  This is a must-use tool if you’re interested in trading stocks profitably.

We’ll see more and more vertical business applications as Twitter continues to expand as a truly global conversation platform.

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