The story
In 2014, the Review of Financial Studies published Wisdom of Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted Through Social Media. Researchers from City University of Hong Kong, Purdue University and Georgia Institute of Technology analyzed approximately 100,000 Seeking Alpha articles and commentary published between 2005 and 2012. The researchers looked at the ability of Seeking Alpha articles to predict not only future stock returns (a variable susceptible to influence by analysts' published opinions), but also future earnings surprises (a variable unlikely to be influenced by published opinions). The authors found that views expressed in Seeking Alpha articles, as well as reader commentaries on those articles, did predict future stock returns over every time-frame examined, from one month to three years. Articles and reader commentaries also predicted earning surprises.
From Wikipedia’s article on Seeking Alpha, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4