The world's biggest Hedge Fund, Bridgewater, uses social media for real-time economic modeling

The world's biggest Hedge Fund, Bridgewater, uses social media for real-time economic modeling. According to Bridgewater's Greg Jensen, they've been using everything that is available online, from social media to real-time Internet prices (e.g. Amazon), to model economic activity in what is effectively real-time. As Jensen said, from Twitter and Facebook (and so on) we can capture every time somebody is saying they bought a new car. We could add those up and can compare that to the stats and be really on the pulse of what's going on with something like auto sales or, similarly, with home sales. Bridgewater's end goal: to be able to track the economy on a day-to-day basis. Which in a world of high frequency trading, in which millisecond responses to stimuli is critical for alpha-generation, is paramount. (VIEW LINK)