A new app promises to let anyone use social media sentiment to guide them in the stock market

Derwent Capital Markets raised eyebrows when it launched a hedge fund that used analysis of Twitter to predict movements in the stock market. Now the London-based firm is set to open up its technology for anyone to use via what it’s calling the “world’s first social media sentiment analysis trading platform.”

The service, set to launch in late summer, promises to allow investors and stock traders to monitor the global social media sentiment around any stock, commodity or currency in real-time – hopefully giving them an edge when they trade.

Derwent’s technology is based on a 2010 academic paper that showed how information from Twitter could predict how stock would perform. Since then it has been putting the theory to the test via its Derwent Absolute Return Fund. The new platform appears to essentially be ‘Radian6 for traders’, letting anyone do the same with their own money. It will be available as both a browser-based service and a mobile app.

While the firm isn’t giving any more precise launch details than ‘”late summer,” we’ll be watching this one closely.