StockTwits, Inc. is a great site. There is no denying it can be a great tool to add to your trading toolbox. If used correctly.
Below I am going to list some things that new users with very little trading experience may find useful. Maybe even some users who have considerable market knowledge, yet not really got to grips with some of the things the site can do. This will not be for everyone and anyone who can sign-up can figure all of this out pretty quickly. While all the screenshots here are for desktop, most of the tips listed are transferable to the mobile application.
Let’s begin!
You’ve just signed up or you’ve been lurking for a while, you want to take the plunge and get involved. These tips should help out with getting the most out of StockTwits.
1. Follow the right people, mute the wrong people
Probably the most important thing to do is determine your preferred style and follow people with a similar view. I would also suggest following people outside your normal market or analysis network to get a grasp of what others are saying. E.g if you’re a perma-bear with a hatred of the Fed, it’s usually a good idea to follow some perma-bulls who ignore the Fed for a bit of an “outside” look.
Here are some links for ideas on who to follow:
For those who use a technical approach:
Anyone with a firm interest in earnings season and fundamental analysis:
And for a mixed bag of everything (Plus some other tips) This one is from co-founder and chairman of StockTwits, howardlindzon. (1)
Anything market or finance related comes with its fair share of lies, deceit and bullshit. StockTwits, while a sound platform for the most part, is no exception to the odd user(s) trying to offer a service, touting the best stock to “BUY right now!!!” or claiming they’ve made excessive gains in a very short amount of time. Anyone who remembers, or has read old AOL and Yahoo type trading forums/chatrooms from early 90's-2001 will know this is nothing new.
With proper use of the site most of this is avoidable. The block and mute functions work as a second wall to your (I would hope, already hardened) BS filter. While it is not for me to say who to block or mute, a good rule of thumb I go by is not block or mute anyone unless they fall under any or all of this criteria:
- Continue to crop up annoyingly in your stream (we will touch on streams later and how you can get the best out of the selections) with large volumes of messages that do not relate to you or your trading strategy in anyway. E.g an account that generates and posts automatic signals on currencies or swing trade alerts, I tend to mute these but others may and do find them useful, with frequent site use you’ll discover what you like most.
- Harass you or send unsolicited messages that add nothing but hot air to a conversation. (This goes without saying really but I see a lot of people that react to trolls, it isn’t worth the time or effort in my opinion. Just block and mute.)
- Trying to manipulate prices or sentiment with messages of insignificant value. You’ll spot this a mile off. Sometimes it is genuine excitement in which case it’s worth politely saying you heard them the first time. Others there is a real possibility that they might be getting paid to big up a stock worth $0.004, I know.. Lame huh? Even lamer when one individual trader thinks they can do it alone. These guys need the Dow Theory amiright?. (Also a good idea to report these messages too if you suspect they are spreading genuine misinformation or trying to jack up prices.)
However this is all personal preference. We are all adults and we all know what’s good and what’s bad. (One would hope!!)
On the new site it is easy to block and mute. Just navigate to the user in questions profile and there should be some options next to “Follow, Message” buttons. If you’re using the older site, there is no option to mute but it is possible to mute via mobile application.
2. Creating Watchlists
Howard touches on this and explains its importance briefly in the blog post mentioned earlier(1) but I will expand on how to get the most out of your Watchlist and its features.
Adding your favourite stocks to a Watchlist opens up your streams to even more ideas, charts and information. It exposes you to what others are saying about the stock you are watching. The most common you’ll probably see is the one from your Mobile Watchlist that you hopefully crafted when you signed up!
Obviously you add new tickers with the ‘+’ in the right hand corner and arrange them a number of ways with the down-facing arrow button.
You can take your watchlists a few steps further by making multiple ones you can track. This is handy for making, say, a wathclist dedicated to stocks that are part of XLF (SPDR Financial Sector, tracks stocks related to financial services like banks).
Go to the “old” site. That is just stocktwits.com/home/
To the right of your watchlist you should see a few options. “Mobile Watchlist | Following:” etc
Click “More Streams” and underneath the “Select a Stream” Options you should see the option to Add New Watchlists. (Highlighted in blue)
Name your list, add some tickers and then it will be available to track at your leisure. Create multiple ones and select which one to have as your main stream. More on that next.
Once added you can remove/rearrange to your liking.
3. Stream optimisation
You’re following people, you’ve got tickers in your lists, now you need to optimise these features. There’s a couple of things that can be done depending on preference or mood. I personally like to have my stream set to ‘Suggested’. That way, StockTwits gives me a bit of everything.
Occasionally if I am analysing markets or particular sector for a day or so I’ll select my ‘Watchlist’ stream
Usually if I have a watchlist selected I’ll set it so only charts show up. This option can be selected from the top of any stream and looks like the above image.
Other days I will want to see what my friends and connections are saying, so I can go to ‘People’ or a mixture of ‘People & Stocks’
‘Trending’ Is another good stream to watch. This will most likely be the first thing you see when logging into the site. It is an extremely handy area of the site as it can give you a feel of what is moving, what is interesting and what is happening. It’s a way to find new stocks and new opportunities or perhaps as a contrarian indicator to your portfolio toolbox.
These streams can be viewed at anytime directly from the home page via methods listed above and below.
The Heatmap is a map that shows you what sectors are showing the most positive or negative sentiment. A good way to find out which stocks are likely performing well or are lagging over a 24hr, 12hr, 6hr or 1hr time frame. You can get to the Heatmap on the old site by navigating to the top of the page, above the Trending stocks bar. On the new site it should be the second box down to the left hand side of your home page.
The Unusal Social Volume on StockTwits page, located on the same one as the Heatmap is another great resource. Allowing you to see unusual sentiment levels in falling or rising stocks over a maximum of 90 Days.
It is worth noting that things are a little different on the new site as it is only Beta at the moment so some features haven't been carried over yet. But selecting streams is very straightforward:-
As you can tell this is based on personal preference and you will discover what is best simply by playing around with these features. If you are feeling really brave, you can try the ‘All’ Stream. Make sure you have quick eyes.
If you don’t have quick eyes or are using Chrome and don’t have enough Ram... You can ‘Pause’ the stream where it is and manually load it. You can also have a pop out stream if you want to watch a stocks Earnings reactions.
4. Best practices
Now you have the basics on watchlists and streams it is worth taking some time to think about your content and interactions. I am not here to patronise anybody, nor tell anyone how to act. That just isn’t what I do. But I will lay out some of the things I do to make sure I am providing meaningful ideas and chat.
- This ain’t Twitter. I made the mistake in my early days on StockTwits thinking it was just like Twitter but more stocks. Wrong! StockTwits is very different. It is a community and you gotta treat people the way you would like to be treated. Be nice! Respect goes a long way and you’ll benefit more from the site if you’re giving informed information with credible sources or analysis. Understand this and you’ll probably have more people to talk to.
- Keep it on-topic in $TICKER Streams. Talk with your buddies about other stuff, like what you had for dinner or who you blocked today, away from ticker streams. It gets really annoying.
- If you’re talking about one stock it is worth limiting the amount you post to save cluttering up streams. Very apt for streams with low message Volume(more on that next). By making use of the character count and using only one ticker, another one or two related tickers is not a bad idea either but avoid cluttering posts with two words and 16 different symbols. It’s a surefire way to get blocked and muted.
- Upload a profile image! It is much more pleasing having a discussion with someone who has a profile image. Doesn’t need to be your mugshot but a profile image is a great starting point to getting new conversation going.
- Keep it light on profanity and crude images. Seriously, we all swear. I swear a lot but everyone can respect there is a time and a place. StockTwits, in my opinion, is not the place to curse like a sailor in every message. Most certainly not the best place to upload that picture of the shit you had this morning too. Seriously.. I have seen that on a stream before and it is disgusting. Just one extreme example but you get the point!
5.1 Memes and jokes are plentiful. So bring your best.
5. Curating a post
Some people can get caught up on how to interact with the streams and gain exposure to new friends and followers. I will run through a few things that is worth looking at before you post.
- Really think about what it is you’re trying to get across. Does your post have a ‘$TICKER’? (E.g if talking about Apple stock — $AAPL) If you don’t add a stocks symbol to your message next to no one will see it! But use them correctly. I can’t think for the amount of times I have seen a message that just says “$SPY Going up now” or simply “$SPY Bullish” — This adds nothing. If you think it’s going up, say why you think so. If you are overly bearish, people want reasons or your argument is pretty much automatically invalid.
- Use the Sentiment Slider to show if you are Bullish or Bearish.
Using this responsibly with a ticker symbol will add to the Sentiment of your chosen stocks stream. You can check sentiment and message volume to the right of most ticker streams.
It is always worth thinking about the content that you are sharing when using sliders. If your post is a meme or humours image of a companies CEO etc, is it worth adding sentiment? Are you genuinely bullish or bearish? then why not I guess. I tend to never use the sliders anyway, as I prefer being “Trendish” as opposed to Bullish or Bearish.
You can read more on how this is calculated here:
3. If you’re fundamental, technical, both or just like looking at everything. Everyone loves a chart. Balance sheets have charts, corn production has charts and they’re a trader/investors best friend. I always try to use a chart to show what I am saying when talking about a stock. Charts are a universal language.
The new site will allow the adding of charts without sacrificing character count. Very handy! The mobile app and old site, however, will not.
Bonus section on uploading charts and images!
While charts are cool, funny pictures and memes are too. But when I do post charts and hilarity.. I will always try and get the highest possible quality image. Not only for my own OCD, but also because it looks nicer on your stream and everyone else’s.
I will wrap it up here and I hope that you can find some use in StockTwits features and got some good tips on posting content.
I must stress that while StockTwits will no doubt be a great tool for any investor/trader, you should always do your own research on any subject be it from StockTwits themselves or any other user of the site before buying or selling stocks, futures, etfs or any other products.
Please do not hesitate to contact me here, on StockTwits or Twitter if you have any questions or just want to talk markets. “@DeathCubeA”
Alistair.
