Web search queries can predict stock market volumes

We live in a computerized and networked society where many of our actions leave a digital trace and affect other people's actions. This has lead to the emergence of a new data-driven research field: mathematical methods of computer science, statistical physics and sociometry provide insights on a wide range of disciplines ranging from social science to human mobility. A recent important discovery is that search engine traffic (i.e., the number of requests submitted by users to search engines on the www) can be used to track and, in some cases, to anticipate the dynamics of social phenomena. Successful examples include unemployment levels, car and home sales, and epidemics spreading. Few recent works applied this approach to stock prices and market sentiment. However, it remains unclear if trends in financial markets can be anticipated by the collective wisdom of on-line users on the web. Here we show that daily trading volumes of stocks traded in NASDAQ-100 are correlated with daily volumes of queries related to the same stocks. In particular, query volumes anticipate in many cases peaks of trading by one day or more. Our analysis is carried out on a unique dataset of queries, submitted to an important web search engine, which enable us to investigate also the user behavior. We show that the query volume dynamics emerges from the collective but seemingly uncoordinated activity of many users. These findings contribute to the debate on the identification of early warnings of financial systemic risk, based on the activity of users of the www.     

Genetic evidence highlights potential impacts of by-catch to cetaceans

Incidental entanglement in fishing gear is arguably the most serious threat to many populations of small cetaceans, judging by the alarming number of captured animals. However, other aspects of this threat, such as the potential capture of mother-offspring pairs or reproductive pairs, could be equally or even more significant but have rarely been evaluated. Using a combination of demographic and genetic data we provide evidence that i) Franciscana dolphin pairs that are potentially reproductive and mother-offspring pairs form temporal bonds, and ii) are entangled simultaneously. Our results highlight potential demographic and genetic impacts of by-catch to cetacean populations: the joint entanglement of mother-offspring or reproductive pairs, compared to random individuals, might exacerbate the demographic consequences of by-catch, and the loss of groups of relatives means that significant components of genetic diversity could be lost together. Given the social nature of many odontocetes (toothed cetaceans), we suggest that these potential impacts could be rather general to the group and therefore by-catch could be more detrimental than previously considered.     

Coupling News Sentiment with Web Browsing Data Improves Prediction of Intra-Day Price Dynamics

The new digital revolution of big data is deeply changing our capability of understanding society and forecasting the outcome of many social and economic systems. Unfortunately, information can be very heterogeneous in the importance, relevance, and surprise it conveys, affecting severely the predictive power of semantic and statistical methods. Here we show that the aggregation of web users’ behavior can be elicited to overcome this problem in a hard to predict complex system, namely the financial market. Specifically, our in-sample analysis shows that the combined use of sentiment analysis of news and browsing activity of users of Yahoo! Finance greatly helps forecasting intra-day and daily price changes of a set of 100 highly capitalized US stocks traded in the period 2012–2013. Sentiment analysis or browsing activity when taken alone have very small or no predictive power. Conversely, when considering a news signal where in a given time interval we compute the average sentiment of the clicked news, weighted by the number of clicks, we show that for nearly 50% of the companies such signal Granger-causes hourly price returns. Our result indicates a “wisdom-of-the-crowd” effect that allows to exploit users’ activity to identify and weigh properly the relevant and surprising news, enhancing considerably the forecasting power of the news sentiment.     

REDUCING INCIDENTAL MORTALITY OF FRANCISCANA DOLPHIN PONTOPORIA BLAINVILLEI WITH ACOUSTIC WARNING DEVICES ATTACHED TO FISHING NETS

We conducted a double blind experiment in an artisanal gillnet fishery in Argentina to determine the effectiveness of acoustic deterrents (pingers) at reducing bycatch of the Franciscana dolphin ( Pontoporia blainvillei ). The fishery was conducted by small inflatable and fiberglass vessels operating between 0.5 and 7 krn from the coast. Each vessel carried an independent observer who was rotated from vessel to vessel throughout the course of the experiment. Information on the number of dolphins captured, geographic position, depth, configuration of fishing gear, soak time, biomass of fish caught, and sea lion predation in a string/net producing any damage was recorded. Equivalent numbers of active and silent pingers were used during the experiment. A total of 45 dolphins were caught in the silent nets, and seven were caught in the active pinger nets, demonstrating a highly significant reduction in bycatch for this species. However, sea-lions ( Otaria flavescens ) damaged the fish in active pinger nets significantly more than silent nets, and the damage increased over the course of the experiment. Although pingers show promise as a management tool for this species, pinniped depredation suggests that higher pinger frequencies will be needed to avoid a "dinner bell" effect.