Can More Tweets Save the Stock Market from Real-Time Twitter Scheming?

Bloomberg (not the man) has added tweets to Bloomberg Terminal, its Wall Street information machine, hoping to fix, in one fell swoop and in a week when the SEC stepped in on social media, all of the headaches that Twitter has been giving the markets.

Bloomberg (not the man) has added tweets to Bloomberg Terminal, its Wall Street information machine, hoping to fix, in one fell swoop and in a week when the SEC stepped in on social media, all of the headaches that Twitter has been giving the markets. Although it wasn't institutionalized, traders already checked the real-time news platform on their phones, according to DealBook's William Alden, which, because of all the unvetted information flying around the network, hasn't always worked out so well. There was the time that a fake tweet about the Syrian president's death cause caused a spike in crude. Or that other time when someone impersonated David Einhorn. These Twitter "pump and dumps," as they're called, aren't uncommon, in part, because its hard for people to tell what's real and what's not — and once something spreads, it has a social-media life of its own. And things may only get crazier with the Securities and Exchange Commission now officially allowing companies to make announcements on the network. Bloomberg's Twitter integration, however, hopes to add a little legitimacy to Twitter by only showing tweets from legitimate sources, as Bloomberg's Brian Rooney explained to DealBook.

Specifically, the terminal will show tweets only from specific, vetted sources, such as companies, CEOs, and other "news-makers." Rooney offered the NYU economist Nouriel Roubini and investor Paul Kedrosky as examples. And then traders can sift through it by company, industry, markets, or people, as you can see in the screen grab from Bloomberg's Jared Keller:

It's unclear how Bloomberg has vetted the people on the terminal for their accuracy. Perhaps Twitter's own verification process has to do with it. But the SEC's new policy should help a bit, too.