IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v38y2021ics1544612319314199.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does investor sentiment on social media provide robust information for Bitcoin returns predictability?

Author

Listed:
  • Guégan, Dominique
  • Renault, Thomas

Abstract

We use a dataset of approximately one million messages sent on StockTwits to explore the relationship between investor sentiment on social media and intraday Bitcoin returns. We find a statistically significant relationship between investor sentiment and Bitcoin returns for frequencies of up to 15 minutes. For lower frequencies, the relation disappears. We also find that the impact of sentiment on returns is concentrated on the period around the Bitcoin bubble. However, the magnitude of the effect is rather small making it impossible for a trader to make economic profits by trading on the information published on social media.

Suggested Citation

  • Guégan, Dominique & Renault, Thomas, 2021. "Does investor sentiment on social media provide robust information for Bitcoin returns predictability?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:38:y:2021:i:c:s1544612319314199
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101494
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612319314199
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101494?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Stengos, Thanasis & Vravosinos, Orestis, 2018. "On the determinants of bitcoin returns: A LASSO approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 235-240.
    2. Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Jana, R.K. & Das, Debojyoti & Roubaud, David, 2018. "Informational efficiency of Bitcoin—An extension," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 106-109.
    3. Demir, Ender & Gozgor, Giray & Lau, Chi Keung Marco & Vigne, Samuel A., 2018. "Does economic policy uncertainty predict the Bitcoin returns? An empirical investigation," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 145-149.
    4. Sensoy, Ahmet, 2019. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin revisited: A high-frequency analysis with alternative currencies," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 68-73.
    5. Grobys, Klaus & Sapkota, Niranjan, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies and momentum," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 6-10.
    6. Renault, Thomas, 2017. "Intraday online investor sentiment and return patterns in the U.S. stock market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 25-40.
    7. Urquhart, Andrew, 2018. "What causes the attention of Bitcoin?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 40-44.
    8. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    9. Thomas Renault, 2017. "Intraday online investor sentiment and return patterns in the U.S. stock market," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-03205113, HAL.
    10. Dastgir, Shabbir & Demir, Ender & Downing, Gareth & Gozgor, Giray & Lau, Chi Keung Marco, 2019. "The causal relationship between Bitcoin attention and Bitcoin returns: Evidence from the Copula-based Granger causality test," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 160-164.
    11. Steven L. Heston & Robert A. Korajczyk & Ronnie Sadka, 2010. "Intraday Patterns in the Cross‐section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(4), pages 1369-1407, August.
    12. Shen, Dehua & Urquhart, Andrew & Wang, Pengfei, 2019. "Does twitter predict Bitcoin?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 118-122.
    13. Aalborg, Halvor Aarhus & Molnár, Peter & de Vries, Jon Erik, 2019. "What can explain the price, volatility and trading volume of Bitcoin?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 255-265.
    14. Urquhart, Andrew, 2016. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 80-82.
    15. Baur, Dirk G. & Cahill, Daniel & Godfrey, Keith & (Frank) Liu, Zhangxin, 2019. "Bitcoin time-of-day, day-of-week and month-of-year effects in returns and trading volume," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 78-92.
    16. Bariviera, Aurelio F., 2017. "The inefficiency of Bitcoin revisited: A dynamic approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 1-4.
    17. Kim, Soon-Ho & Kim, Dongcheol, 2014. "Investor sentiment from internet message postings and the predictability of stock returns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 708-729.
    18. Obryan Poyser, 2019. "Exploring the dynamics of Bitcoin’s price: a Bayesian structural time series approach," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 9(1), pages 29-60, March.
    19. Dyhrberg, Anne H. & Foley, Sean & Svec, Jiri, 2018. "How investible is Bitcoin? Analyzing the liquidity and transaction costs of Bitcoin markets," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 140-143.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aurelio F. Bariviera & Ignasi Merediz‐Solà, 2021. "Where Do We Stand In Cryptocurrencies Economic Research? A Survey Based On Hybrid Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 377-407, April.
    2. Flori, Andrea, 2019. "News and subjective beliefs: A Bayesian approach to Bitcoin investments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 336-356.
    3. Ahmed, Walid M.A., 2022. "Robust drivers of Bitcoin price movements: An extreme bounds analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Andrea Flori, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies In Finance: Review And Applications," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 22(05), pages 1-22, August.
    5. Parthajit Kayal & Purnima Rohilla, 2021. "Bitcoin in the economics and finance literature: a survey," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(7), pages 1-21, July.
    6. Böyükaslan, Adem & Ecer, Fatih, 2021. "Determination of drivers for investing in cryptocurrencies through a fuzzy full consistency method-Bonferroni (FUCOM-F’B) framework," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    7. Wu, Wanshan & Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Gozgor, Giray & Leping, Huang, 2021. "Does economic policy uncertainty affect cryptocurrency markets? Evidence from Twitter-based uncertainty measures," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    8. Wei Zhang & Pengfei Wang, 2020. "Investor attention and the pricing of cryptocurrency market," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 445-468, July.
    9. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Stengos, Thanasis & Vravosinos, Orestis, 2019. "The effects of markets, uncertainty and search intensity on bitcoin returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 220-242.
    10. Ibikunle, Gbenga & McGroarty, Frank & Rzayev, Khaladdin, 2020. "More heat than light: Investor attention and bitcoin price discovery," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    11. ORĂȘTEAN Ramona & MĂRGINEAN Silvia Cristina & SAVA Raluca, 2019. "Bitcoin In The Scientific Literature – A Bibliometric Study," Studies in Business and Economics, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 14(3), pages 160-174, December.
    12. R. K. Jana & Indranil Ghosh & Debojyoti Das, 2021. "A differential evolution-based regression framework for forecasting Bitcoin price," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 306(1), pages 295-320, November.
    13. Dias, Ishanka K. & Fernando, J.M. Ruwani & Fernando, P. Narada D., 2022. "Does investor sentiment predict bitcoin return and volatility? A quantile regression approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    14. Bouteska, Ahmed & Mefteh-Wali, Salma & Dang, Trung, 2022. "Predictive power of investor sentiment for Bitcoin returns: Evidence from COVID-19 pandemic," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    15. Bedi, Prateek & Nashier, Tripti, 2020. "On the investment credentials of Bitcoin: A cross-currency perspective," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    16. Pengfei Wang & Wei Zhang & Xiao Li & Dehua Shen, 2019. "Trading volume and return volatility of Bitcoin market: evidence for the sequential information arrival hypothesis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(2), pages 377-418, June.
    17. Bouraoui, Taoufik, 2020. "The drivers of Bitcoin trading volume in selected emerging countries," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 218-229.
    18. Ahmed H. Elsayed & Giray Gozgor & Chi Keung Marco Lau, 2022. "Causality and dynamic spillovers among cryptocurrencies and currency markets," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 2026-2040, April.
    19. Duan, Kun & Li, Zeming & Urquhart, Andrew & Ye, Jinqiang, 2021. "Dynamic efficiency and arbitrage potential in Bitcoin: A long-memory approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    20. Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian & Urquhart, Andrew & Yarovaya, Larisa, 2019. "Cryptocurrencies as a financial asset: A systematic analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 182-199.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cryptocurrency; Bitcoin; Investor sentiment; Investor attention; Market efficiency; Social media; Stocktwits;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:38:y:2021:i:c:s1544612319314199. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.