Hedge fund managers are looking in an unlikely place for stock tips: your Twitter feed.
Tashtego, a hedge fund firm based in Boston, is setting up a Social Equities Fund, which will based its investment decisions on consumer sentiments from social media. It will rely on algorithms and is looking to raise around $1 billion, according to Bloomberg.
From Bloomberg:
Tashtego’s strategy involves tracking all-purpose social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and online communities set up specifically for investors to share and follow each other’s trading ideas. Tel Aviv-based EToro, whose early venture backers include Spark Capital, is the biggest such social investing network.
Social investment networks have grown in popularity along with broader sites such as Twitter. They started in the middle of the last decade, mostly within foreign-exchange markets, and later expanded to stocks. Before setting up the stock fund last year, Tashtego started a foreign-exchange pool in 2013 to trade based on data from social networks, Mateos said.
Spark Capital, a major backer of Tashtego, was one of Twitter’s early investors.