TipTop's
sentiment analysis of real-time tweets is a leading indicator, often
predicting correctly the rise and fall in sentiment around topics
such as President Obama approval ratings when measured in more traditional
ways. See our earlier blog post, President
Obama's Ratings via Social Media Sentiment Trends.

In
this blog post, we show some striking correlations
by comparing side-by-side, TipTop's satisfaction and dissatisfaction ratings with
those of Gallup's
from November 2009 (when we started collecting data for analysis)
till now.

• 
  The
  Gallup ratings and
  TipTop's semantic analysis of social media data have parallel
  results, both long term trends and daily spikes within a 3% margin
  for error. For example, why did both TipTop Sentiment and Gallup
  Poll ratings all spike positively on December 16, 2009? This was the
  date on which President Obama delivered his Nobel Prize Acceptance
  speech.
  
• 
  TipTop's
  daily satisfaction dissatisfaction ratings tend to rise or fall 0-3
  days before traditional polling results spike. For example, on Jan
  28th there was a positive spike for the President's State of the
  Union Address which was reflected only a few days later in the
  Gallup ratings.
• 
  We
  note with some
  surprise that TipTop’s presidential sentiment analysis can be
  predictive of stock market movements in the short term. For
  example, a
  spike of 5% or more in the daily TipTop satisfaction score (such as
  those on Nov 3, Nov 8, Dec 10, Jan 28 and Feb 6) is followed within
  a couple of days by a rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 2%
  or more.
  

Our
early findings suggest that perhaps earlier studies on whether
Presidential ratings lead the stock market have been too quick to
dismiss the possibility. (See for example, the April 2006 article in
Slate, Obscure
Economic Indicator: Presidential Approval Ratings,
that concludes that “it
takes a while for bad economic news to filter into polling data…[and
by] the time poor approval ratings measure this economic pessimism,
much of the bad news has already been priced into stocks.” A
timely, accurate and automated polling technology like TipTop’s has
the potential to uncover surprising insights into the psychology of
the markets.

Trend
analysis of real-time social media as a predictive indicator is an
active area of research at TipTop Technologies, and we look forward to presenting
more insights  into the relationship of sentiment trends and financial
markets, shopping patterns, election results and predictions for the
2010 Academy Award Winners (like Sentiment Trends for President Obama). Stay tuned.

Greg
Martin
& the TipTop
Team