Earlier this year, Twitter led to the plunging of Twitter’s shares. Twitter Inc. was slated to announce its financial results at 4 pm Eastern Time on 28th April 2015, which was after the market closes. However, shortly after 3 pm Eastern Time, Financial services firm Selerity caused havoc when it tweeted the company’s first quarter earnings an hour before schedule. Twitter issued a press release about 25 minutes later confirming Selerity’s figures. Six seconds after the Tweet was sent, Twitter shares plunged 20%, which led to the New York Stock Exchange briefly halting trading of Twitter shares as the company sorted its mess.
This marked one of several incidents in which Twitter has been used to break news likely to affect the financial markets. In 2013, Twitter partnered with Bloomberg, the most eminent financial data company in the world to allow users of the Bloomberg terminal access financial news and information from tweets. The Bloomberg Terminal is the company’s proprietary hardware that consists of two screens allowing users to access news, financial data and analytics as well as risk and portfolio management tools.
In a new partnership, Bloomberg terminal users will receive financial tweets and data complete with sentiment analytics. According to Fortune magazine, Bloomberg acknowledges Twitter allows users to uncover early trends, breaking news, and sentiment shifts, which may be indicative of changing market conditions. Bloomberg will then streamline and offer rich content to its various users who include financial professionals and government.
