Heiberger Raphael H
Institute for Sociology, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
PLoS One. 2015 Aug 10;10(8):e0135311. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135311. eCollection 2015.
Today´s connected world allows people to gather information in shorter intervals than ever before, widely monitored by massive online data sources. As a dramatic economic event, recent financial crisis increased public interest for large companies considerably. In this paper, we exploit this change in information gathering behavior by utilizing Google query volumes as a "bad news" indicator for each corporation listed in the Standard and Poor´s 100 index. Our results provide not only an investment strategy that gains particularly in times of financial turmoil and extensive losses by other market participants, but reveal new sectoral patterns between mass online behavior and (bearish) stock market movements. Based on collective attention shifts in search queries for individual companies, hence, these findings can help to identify early warning signs of financial systemic risk. However, our disaggregated data also illustrate the need for further efforts to understand the influence of collective attention shifts on financial behavior in times of regular market activities with less tremendous changes in search volumes.
在当今互联互通的世界中，人们获取信息的时间间隔比以往任何时候都短，且受到海量在线数据源的广泛监测。作为一个重大的经济事件，近期的金融危机极大地提高了公众对大公司的关注度。在本文中，我们利用谷歌搜索量作为标准普尔100指数中每家公司的“坏消息”指标，来探究这种信息收集行为的变化。我们的研究结果不仅提供了一种投资策略，这种策略在金融动荡时期以及其他市场参与者遭受巨大损失时能特别获利，还揭示了大众在线行为与（看跌的）股市走势之间新的行业模式。基于对各公司搜索查询中集体注意力的转移，因此，这些发现有助于识别金融系统性风险的早期预警信号。然而，我们的细分数据也表明，在搜索量变化较小的正常市场活动时期，仍需进一步努力去理解集体注意力转移对金融行为的影响。
