[HN Gopher] Predicting stock market returns from news photos
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       Predicting stock market returns from news photos
        
       Author : sizzle
       Score  : 51 points
       Date   : 2021-10-22 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.rmit.edu.au)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.rmit.edu.au)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | yellow_lead wrote:
       | I didn't read the whole study and this is a pre-proof but I'm not
       | very optimistic about claims like this. There are often many data
       | biases that are hard to root out.
       | 
       | https://sci-hubtw.hkvisa.net/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.06.002
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Is probably another case of "you think you are good, but it was
       | just luck"
        
       | black_13 wrote:
       | Boy everyone forgets 2001 and 2008 and the devastation
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | I dunno if this is related to the article because its pay-walled,
       | but elon tweeting a picture of dogs does seem to make doge-themed
       | coins go up
        
       | java-man wrote:
       | $39.95 (for academic use).
       | 
       | Excellent! I am sure the research was paid for by the Australian
       | taxpayers, but it's Elsevier who makes money from publication.
        
       | personjerry wrote:
       | This is silly because the photo selections are predicated on the
       | news articles.
       | 
       | Which implies the articles for that day are already published.
       | 
       | Which means this classifier basically "reads the market news
       | correctly based on the pictures within".
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | From the article: _" It works by analysing the 'top lists' of
       | editorial pictures on stock image website Getty. Using machine
       | learning, the algorithm produces a daily score based on the types
       | of photos used in global news reports. Lead author Dr Angel Zhong
       | said investors could use this information to better predict daily
       | stock market returns, based on the mood of investors worldwide."_
       | 
       | Not, "Angel Zhong Fund announces 142% gain for year."
        
         | quickthrowman wrote:
         | Exactly. If you could accurately predict returns, you wouldn't
         | publish, you'd profit. Profiting from the strategy would be a
         | much better form of proof than a paper.
         | 
         | Although.. maybe this is the secret sauce that powers Jim
         | Simons' Medallion Fund
        
           | betterunix2 wrote:
           | Or it might just be that this is already known to the
           | algorithmic traders, who already use headlines (text) as an
           | input to their systems.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | capableweb wrote:
           | > Exactly. If you could accurately predict returns, you
           | wouldn't publish, you'd profit
           | 
           | While it's sometimes fun to assume things, it gets hard when
           | you talk about people. In this case, not everyone is driven
           | by profits and money, so it's most likely incorrect to assume
           | "They didn't use this way of gaining profit themselves, so
           | it's probably not profitable".
        
             | agumonkey wrote:
             | Also nothing says he didn't try and profit enough (to fund
             | more research) from his idea already.
        
           | ggm wrote:
           | It probably had implicit status as post hoc reasoning since
           | the images include post closure photos for at least some
           | markets since some news images come after closure. They'd
           | have to work awfully hard to demonstrate better than random
           | with only prior data.
           | 
           | A confounding problem is that news sources change stories and
           | use a/b testing to pick story winners.
           | 
           | This could even be a meta analysis of emerging sentiment on
           | delay, which means you'd do better timewise on the origin
           | sentiment than the second differential. Except you can't
           | access the same pool of opinion so at best, it's a clever
           | trick to access emerging sentiment through reactive reasoning
           | on news sites. Why is that better as a driving function to
           | invest across the market than other sources?
        
         | jaredwiener wrote:
         | Also -- wouldn't it be a safe assumption that photo editors are
         | choosing the pictures that match the tone of the news they are
         | reporting on? This seems like a roundabout way of saying that
         | financial news seems to mostly accurately report the state of
         | financial markets....
        
           | nanis wrote:
           | Ah, that pesky reverse causation thing ...
           | 
           | In fact, one might get even better results if one trains the
           | model on the daily market charts newspapers publish such as
           | this: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/stock-market-newspaper-
           | backg...
           | 
           | Oh, that's harder to get than the top-10 list at Getty, I
           | see. Yeah, convenience sampling is king.
           | 
           | Is one of the authors "Not Sure!" by any chance?
        
         | secondaryacct wrote:
         | The first rule of investing though is once everyone knows the
         | martingale, nobody can profit off of it anymore.
         | 
         | So now this won't work.
        
           | qeternity wrote:
           | That's OP's point: if this were truly predictive then you
           | would just go raise a few billion dollars and quietly
           | implement this strategy...you wouldn't write a paper about
           | it.
           | 
           | The fact that we're reading about a paper, and not a headline
           | about a wildly successful systematic fund, suggests this
           | isn't all that valuable.
        
             | not-elite wrote:
             | You're probably correct in this case, but not in general.
             | The authors of [1] could have quietly run a money printer
             | but elected to seek reforms instead.
             | 
             | [1] https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/1029s
             | echft...
        
               | danielmarkbruce wrote:
               | i don't think that's right. People were already using the
               | information quickly weren't they?
        
       | cjbenedikt wrote:
       | Download available here:
       | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3841844
        
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