You’re going to love this StockTwits Review, ‘cause even my wife wanted to know more! Her first question was “is it like Twitter?”. Let’s answer that first and find out how StockTwits may help you as a trader. It was indeed described by Entrepreneur Magazine as “a Twitter for traders. It is actually a lot more than that. Some say that it looks more like Facebook than Twitter.
StockTwits has been around as an online community to exchange ideas for over a decade. According to Howard Lindzon, StockTwits co-founder, the registered users of the platform generate and share more than 200,000 ideas and messages every day. Over 2 million individuals use StockTwits to read the ideas/opinions of like-minded investors.
A network growing by more than 50% year-over-year. With such a growth, it can get noisy. You could say that it may tweet like a bird. But, at times, it also honks like a flock of geese. No offense meant to StockTwits (or any goose) because after all, it is noise about what we love: trading!
Table of Contents
StockTwits App Review Introduction
StockTwits founders did recognize the noise issue as they stated recently that, after 10 years of growth, certain types of noise are cluttering the platform with unwanted content.
As an attempt to address the issue, StockTwits launched a new feature called “Rooms”. Check out other StockTwits review articles to get other traders opinions on this.
Members can select and pay for a restricted chat room started by other community members wanting to monetize their trade ideas and content. Only time will tell if this was a good idea from StockTwits. There is no doubt that you can find amazing content on StockTwits but the difficulty is always to know who you can or cannot trust in an industry where many are just after your money.
Thankfully, the Bullish Bears team has your back, with people you can trust, and more than enough free education to grow your skills as a trader.
A Bird With a Pulse
As traders, we need to keep our fingers on the keyboard, on the mouse and on the pulse of the market! StockTwits provides a nice way to read the ‘sentiment’ of the market and even specific stocks; thanks to the ongoing real-time financial communications of the trading and investing community.
This is where many traders see the value of StockTwits. Did you know for example that StockTwits created the $ prefix for displaying stock symbols? The now-famous dollar sign tag is called a cashtag. The use of the cashtag (for example $AAPL) became popular to identify, index and track stocks all over the web (including Twitter).
The real-time feedback driven by the human interaction can be meaningful. StockTwits provides the “Unusual Social Volume” and the “Trending Now” features. It can be a valuable tool to see what is hot and up (or down) at a glance. You will find the “Trending Now” stocks on the left side of the site. What are other StockTwits review articles saying on this?
What Is StockTwits?
- StockTwits is a social stock trading app for traders and investors
- Similar service to Twitter but tailored to stocks
- Traders post about stocks, options, futures, futures, and forex
- Real time stock news posted by real community of traders
- Invest and share your trade ideas commission free with Trade App
Choosing Who to Follow
With the StockTwits App specializing in streaming all manner of stocks, futures, and Forex trading chatter, you can be kept up to date on major market-moving news, and of course, “ideas” from other traders. For a steady stream of ideas and market updates, it is best to keep a limited stream of notifications by maintaining a well-curated notification list.
You only want messages that are useful to you. When you use the StockTwits app, it will be more helpful if you carefully select high-quality accounts and stocks to follow. If you love charts and videos, StockTwits functionality allows users to share technical analysis charts and short videos.
Members can record up to 5-minute videos to share their screens with stock analysis and opinions. It is a good stock trading tool to learn from the pros you follow and, if you feel ready, you can also let the trading guru inside you impart your experience and knowledge.
Recommendations:
- Include a relevant $TICKER in your message.
- When engaging in a conversation with others, use “reply” or address your message directly to the intended user via @username or direct message.
- Be a curator of excellent content.
- When sharing a link to a blog post or an article, paste the long original URL in the StockTwits message box.
- If you see someone sharing great content or smart ideas on the stream, give them a shoutout!
- Be helpful when users ask you questions.
Recommended Activities to Avoid
- Sending links to advertisements for services, or links which require signup/login to view content.
- Do not include $TICKERS in messages where you are not sharing a new and/or actionable trading/investing idea about that ticker.
- Do not include a $TICKER in your side-conversations. It is noise to everyone else on the stream who isn’t party to your discussion.
- Avoid engaging with trolls/haters.
Stocktwits Trade App: Commission-Free Investing
- The StockTwits trade app allows you to invest commission free and allow people to follow the trades that they make. Invest With Friends. It’s a great way to share trades and allow you to learn from other traders.
Stock Portfolio
StockTwits has useful resources despite all the traffic noise inherent to this type of social media. One of the features with the most “likes” among StockTwits users is the ability to connect your brokerage account and see the stocks you own on your StockTwits watchlist.
As swing traders and investors with a portfolio of stocks, you can stay updated on your stocks without too many distractions by simply limiting the notifications to your portfolio and watchlist. In fact, if you don’t have an ongoing watchlist, the StockTwits app is an ideal tool to start one and receive real-time notifications.
Thanks to the TradeIt technology in the StockTwits app, you can sync, view, and manage your portfolio from major brokers right from your StockTwits watchlist. Keep in mind that financial conversations may not equate to good financial advice.
However connecting your watchlist to the app is a way of getting the overall sentiment of popular stocks like AMD, TSLA and AMZN and all the stocks you like. Following their investment in the Robinhood trading platform, StockTwits also offers brokerage functionality powered by Robinhood.
Actually, hundreds of apps nowadays are leveraging the StockTwits API including Trade-Ideas. Interactive Brokers, for example, provides Active Account holders a StockTwits feature in its News streaming window:
The Good
There is a lot more good with StockTwits than bad. Hey, it’s free. It integrates with many other platforms and brokers. It can be used for assessing sentiment and trending stocks and the list goes on. As a trader who likes to interact with like-minded people, StockTwits is a good option.
At least when compared to conventional unfocused social networks. If you manage your StockTwits app properly, it can help you put your finger on the pulse of the market by the minute. It’s user-friendly and there are many ways to sort what you see, including the use of “heatmaps” and graphs.
StockTwits can be enlightening and the chats can be entertaining. However, there are also a few “dislikes” and warnings from the trading community. Check out a list of the top trading companies.
The Not So Good
With so many people chipping in with their opinions and ideas, you may end up with paralysis analysis if you listen to too many. Finding out who to pay attention to is a challenge. There are many trolls and biased traders.
It’s difficult to judge the value of the information when there is no systematic way to verify the identities and profiles of the users. Michael Covel, the author of the book Trend Following, says that the best traders on the planet are not using StockTwits.
Well, I am not sure about that but you have to do your research before you make investments decisions. Despite the harsh critique of Michael Covel, it’s a great platform to discuss stocks (or argue) with other traders. Just keep in mind that the signal-to-noise ratio on StockTwits is weak.
The Circus (And the Acrobat Traders)
If you are looking for a sign as to what to do with your stock, you may get more entertainment value than trading ideas. It’s easy to get so much conflicting information that your decision-making process will be even more difficult.
Some experienced traders see StockTwits chatter as just entertainment. Probably not a place to do your due diligence. It is best not to entirely rely on StockTwits for investment advice.
StockTwits can be fun, but if you are a beginner trader, use it carefully and moderately. Take advantage of our free training for beginners. We’re not circus acrobats but we are a community full of people that are helping each other. Plan your trades with BullishBears and skip the noise.
The Dangerous:
When googling for specific stocks you are likely to end up on StockTwits. Particularly if the “pumper and dumpers” are hard at work promoting the stock. Plus all types of trading educators are on the platform who are more interested in selling to you instead of really educating you.
A good education is not free. However, fair and honest mentors that charge a reasonable fee and have your best interest at heart are not easy to find in a sea of self-promoters, trading gurus and dream sellers. They often leverage StockTwits to get to you.
It doesn’t make Stocktwits bad, you just need to know what to watch for. Or better yet, what to ask for. Documentation beats conversation. Hindsight traders are a dime a dozen.
I heard someone say that a trading expert is often someone who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. Seriously though, nothing compares to having someone teaching live and having access to a documented track record.
Stocktwits Top Followed Stocks
What are the top followed stocks on stocktwits you might ask? Well, the most watched and searched stocks daily are:
- AMZN
- AMD
- SPY
- TSLA
- AAPL
- FB
- NFLX
- ROKU
- AMRN
- NIO
I could go on a lot longer, but I will stop the list here. These stocks have LOTS of watchers. (over 100k) – These stocks also have some fairly good ATR’s too (average true range) – making them fun to trade options on.
StockTwits Stock Price and Symbol: Are They Publicly Traded?
Investors cannot purchase shares of StockTwits because the company is privately held.
StockTwits Final Thoughts
StockTwits is one more tool in your arsenal if you have the patience to find actionable information. Disorganized huge amounts of information can be a time waster. However StockTwits is user-friendly enough to overcome this issue.
If you are new to StockTwits, follow us here and don’t be shy to ask questions and/or contribute.
