Twitter Sentiment Analysis Applied to Finance: A Case Study in the Retail Industry

This paper presents a financial analysis over Twitter sentiment analytics extracted from listed retail brands. We investigate whether there is statistically-significant information between the Twitter sentiment and volume, and stock returns and volatility. Traditional newswires are also considered as a proxy for the market sentiment for comparative purpose. The results suggest that social media is indeed a valuable source in the analysis of the financial dynamics in the retail sector even when compared to mainstream news such as the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.