Contix, a provider of social media event-surfacing technology, is opening its platform to “general availability” for trading desks and other finance professionals for the early identification of market-moving news events.
Contix’ platform is in use by trading desks representing hundreds of billions of dollars of assets under management. The company is engaged with some of the world’s largest and most technologically sophisticated hedge funds. “Every day, news of unplanned events — takeover bids, lawsuit judgments, contract awards, clinical trial results, industrial accidents, etc — breaks first on social media, and Contix’s algorithms rapidly identify these events and alert its users,” explains Ryan Bailey, CEO and cofounder of Contix. “Professional traders are using Contix alerts to make highly profitable trades.”
Unlike other social media alert mining products that rely solely on curated lists of trusted sources, Contix can reliably determine if a previously unknown source that is describing an important event is likely to be credible and relevant. This key differentiator allows Contix to consistently beat major news sources like Bloomberg and Reuters.
Since launching two years ago, Contix has identified hundreds of opportunities to trade ahead of mainstream media coverage of key market events. For example, on 10 November, Contix’s event-surfacing engine, which scans hundreds of millions of posts per day, identified a breaking news event in the Twitter firehose from a source not widely followed by Wall Street: “AT&T has opted *not* to enter the inflight connectivity market.”
Contix’s algorithms identified the source as credible and trustworthy and sent an alert to its users. Shares of inflight connectivity leader Gogo, Inc. (GOGO) started rising, ending the day up 17%. Contix’s alert beat traditional news sources by 38 minutes, giving traders on the Contix platform a wide window to profit from the alert.
“We built our technology to scan the entire Twitter firehose and other social media sources to identify in real-time market-moving events from sources that Bloomberg, Reuters or other news services simply overlook,” says Daniel Leuck, CTO and cofounder.
Each day Contix analyses over 500m social and traditional media posts and sends real-time alerts with the very earliest mentions of breaking financial news events. Whether the news breaks first on social or traditional media, Contix will identify the event and send an alert to its users.
Contix technology algorithmically identifies actionable social media alerts from the entire universe of Twitter users, then confirms that the news has not broken first on traditional media. They provide the only exclusively finance-focused system that pairs social and traditional media in this manner. This allows Contix users to easily identify the most differentiated and valuable alerts, maximising alpha-generating opportunities for its users. Breaking traditional media alerts are also incorporated in the product, providing complete financial news coverage.
