Sentiment-Based Twitter Trading Platform To Launch Next Week

Remember the Twitter-based hedge fund that launched in 2011, but shut down three months later? Well, the technology and algorithms that powered the fund are back, but this time as a trading platform.

According to a report on Bloomberg, London-based DCM Capital Ltd., formerly known as Derwent Capital Markets, will open up an online trading platform next week.

[For more on DCM Capital, read: Twitter-Based Hedge Fund Makes Debut.]

The online trading platform, called DCM Dealer, is billed as "the worlds first sentiment analysis research system" that offers "CFD [Contracts for Difference] trading, spread betting and FX trading on one incredible platform," according to DCM. DCM Dealer will offer real-time sentiment analysis, multi-asset trading capabilities, personalization features and mobile trading capabilities, the company's website says.

"Financial markets are driven by greed and fear but we've never had a way to quantify emotion before," Paul Hawtin, founder and CEO of DCM told Bloomberg. "We monitor 350 million tweets daily, 2.5 billion weekly. So now investors can monitor investors' sentiment and human emotion on specific instruments in real time."

Derwent Capital Markets launched the $40 million Derwent Absolute Return Fund, more commonly known as the Twitter Fund, in August 2011 but shut it down three months later. Apparently the fund performed adequately, producing a return of about two percent, but DCM nevertheless shut down the fund. Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio