Interest in online forums providing investment advice has been growing rapidly. Promises of quick earnings attract inexperienced investors, who uncritically follow the given recommendations. With such behavior, they become an easy target for manipulation, especially caused by users who have a lot of support in the community and appear credible in the eyes of an ignorant reader.
In our thesis, we tried to analyze the impact that such users have on the stock market. We implemented an algorithm that identifies influential users on Reddit and retrieves data about their posts. We then extracted the mentioned stock tickers from the given texts and obtained information about the mood with the help of sentimental analysis. In the final phase, the impact was measured with an event study and trading simulation. An event study is a scientific method that analyzes the power of a chosen event on the value of a stock, while the trading simulation reveals the profitability of the selected investment strategy.
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