How To Trade With Twitter

You can do everything on Twitter that you do on Facebook, plus stuff that’s actually useful. And there’s much less mindless minutia to wade through.

That’s because the people you can follow on Twitter, the contributions they make and the content that floats to the top is almost always much more interesting than your “friends'” attempts at creating the perfect construction of their lives.

Pick an interest. Choose a hobby. Think of your passions. Look up your line of work. Follow the right people. Interact appropriately. Twitter adds to your quality and experience of life in myriad aspects.

Next to LinkedIn, there’s not a more utilitarian social media site than Twitter. But, unless you’re unemployed or otherwise on the hunt for a job or some other specific networking activity, you ultimately use LinkedIn the way you use Facebook. To collect connections. To reunite with blasts from the past.

– “Why Twitter Will Live And Facebook Will Die”, Rocco Pendola, TheStreet.com, August 28

I admit it. I am a social media skeptic. I get no value from Facebook. I waste an hour now and then looking at pictures of other people’s lives and end up feeling like I am missing out. Same for LinkedIn. People request to add me to their contacts and I never hear from them again. What’s the point?

You’ll understand then why I stayed away from Twitter. What could millions of myopic narcissists tweeting away possibly have to say that would be of any interest? I was wrong. I started tweeting regularly a couple weeks ago and I am hooked.

While most of Twitter is a wasteland, there is a select minority worth following.

In addition, the platform is intuitive and efficient. Tweets from those you follow appear in real time on your home page. No time consuming scrolling, clicking and loading. The flow of tweets fits the rhythm of trading.

StockTwits ingeniously created the $ prefix (for ex, $FB) allowing aggregation of all tweets on a particular security. As a result, they are able to track which tickers are trending on a given day which is useful for finding out where the action is.

While Twitter has become another useful tool in my trading, it is just a piece and limits must be set. One hazard I quickly learned is that it is addictive. If you are following 100 people who each tweet twice an hour, that adds up to more than 3 tweets per minute. Every time somebody posts a new tweet, Twitter lets you know and it is difficult to pull yourself away.

Second, Twitter is not conducive to depth of analysis. There is only so much that can be said in 140 characters. To go deeper, newspapers, magazines, analyst research, earnings reports and books remain essential. There is real danger of getting caught in a shallow, unending stream of tweets.

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