If you work at a big bank you probably don’t have access to much in the way of social media at work, which makes sense, since you would probably use Facebook mostly to insider trade and Twitter to prank the Compton sheriff’s department or tweet fake elevator conversations. But now you have a better excuse for condensing your market research into 140-character: A hedge fund that uses Twitter data to drive its trading strategy returned 1.85% in its first month of trading, according to an investor in the fund, in the first sign that social media data can be used successfully to enhance electronic trading techniques. ... (full story)