USING TWITTER AS AN INVESTING TOOL

       Technology Review, a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is reporting on an analysis of 9.7 million Twitter messages from 2008 that researchers found could be used for rough predictions of stock market movements as long as six days in advance.

       The researchers - Johan Bollen and Huina Mao at Indiana University, and Xiao-Jun Zeng at the University of Manchester in England-analyzed activity in the Twitterverse to determine how "calm" people seemed to be feeling, based on a mood analysis tool called "Google-Profile of Mood States." It turns out that the algorithm also serves a good model for fluctuations in the Dow Jones industrial average, the US stock benchmark, predicting 87.6 of "the daily up and down changes in the closing values" of the Dow.

       There are some big caveats, of course like the fact that the Twitter postings could not be narrowed down by geographic origin. Still, to all the traders out there : Maybe this finding will help persuade your bosses to stop blocking your favorite social networking sites.