Wikipedia and stock return: Wikipedia usage pattern helps to predict the individual stock movement

Vast volumes of online information related to news stories, blogs and online social media have an observable effect on investor's opinions towards financial markets. But do these particular information re ect or impact people's decision- making in investment? This paper investigates whether data generated from Internet usage can be used to predict the movements in the financial market. We provide evi- dence that data on how often a company's Wikipedia page is being viewed is linked to its subsequent performance in the stock market. We then develop a portfolio in line with the Wikipedia usages and demonstrate that our investment strategy based on Wikipedia views is profitable both finan- cially and statistically. Our finding implies that online web data such as Wikipedia presents an alternative insights on collecting and quantifying investor's sentiments towards fi- nancial markets, which can be further employed as a timely approximation of investor's behaviours in decision-making.