( CNN ) -- In a world where information is plentiful and abundant , traders are always trying to make money by finding that hidden advantage . Many are betting that 140 characters is all it takes to beat the market . Some professionals in the world of high finance are relying on Twitter and other social media to try to get the edge on the competition . Markets went into a spin last year when someone hacked the AP 's Twitter account and sent bogus tweets about an explosion at the White House , showing just how powerful a sentence can be when millions of dollars are put behind it . Twitter has transformed communication across a host of industries , but many industries remain straightforward in how they use it . Especially in the world of commodities . In Chicago , traders trade futures contracts in every kind of product , from corn to pork belly to orange juice concentrate futures . Essentially , they are making bets on the demand and supply of these items at a later date . Every extra speck of information can make the difference . Some traders expressly follow farmers across the American Midwest and try to get a sense of how much soybean or maize is coming in this year 's crop . Others actively engage with the people that make the products they trade , looking for that edge , directly tweeting farmers for information on what weather they are having and what crops they are growing . But others are using Twitter to in more innovative ways to stay ahead of the pack . `` Our systems can analyze and determine a Tweet in less than a second from the moment a person tweets , '' says Paul Hawtin , the founder of the investment management firm Cayman Atlantic . `` Analyzing untapped and unstructured data sets such as Twitter gives us a distinct advantage over other investment managers . '' Hawtin has been working on a fund based exclusively on using sentiment analysis of Twitter for years , analyzing tweets for relevance and for positive and negative sentiment to base its trades on . His first fund was in July 2010 , when the U.S. debt stand-off caused huge turmoil in the financial markets and forced the $ 25 million fund to close after just a month . Hawtin is launching his second try at such a fund later this year . `` We 're in the process of raising Â£5 million ( $ 8.3 million ) for the new fund and we 've secured Â£1.5 million so far , '' he says . If his first fund had taken off , Cayman Atlantic 's simulated real-time account showed that it would have returned 23.8 % last year -- impressive , but not as good as the Dow Jones Industrial Average , which returned 26.5 % over the same period . For Hawtin , the benefits of going Twitter-only are obvious . `` Breaking news , information trends and global events hit the Twitter network before anywhere else , '' he says . Twitter appears to be a special case . They have tried to feed in data from Facebook and Bit.ly , the URL shortener , but to no avail . `` When people tweet they tend to be talking about real-world events as opposed to Facebook which is more personal and relevant only to friends and family . '' Others are trying to turn the world of trading into the new Twitter . Yoni Assia founded eToro in 2007 as a social network for investing and sees it as democratizing the space . `` It 's about opening the global market and investing and trading in a transparent way , '' he says . `` When you 're using Facebook or Twitter , it 's about social signals . So not all your friends are ones whose financial investments you really want to copy . '' His network allows anyone to trade both virtual and real money , connect with one other and compare investment bets -- and copy the trading strategies of others . EToro , which is not yet available in the U.S. because of regulatory hurdles , has 3.5 million registered users , of which most are using virtual money . About 300,000 are trading with their own cash on the site . It 's Facebook-meets-fantasy football for wannabe day traders . Assia thinks we 're at the start of a change in how we invest , one that will transform trading decisions to ones not just based off reactions to real-world events or mathematical modelling , but one based on the analysis of social media as well . `` I think in the future you 'll have not just fundamental and technical analysis , but social analysis , '' he says . Hawtin , the founder of the Cayman Islands-based hedge fund , concurs . `` We 're in the middle of a data explosion , '' he says . `` Trend-following has been a successful trading strategy for over a century and that forms the core of our investment process . What makes us different from any other trend-following hedge fund is the data we use . '' With billions to be made , Twitter and social media may end up being one of the democratizing forces in the world of finance . Read this : How to start your own currency .
Commodities traders use Twitter to get inside info from farmers . One fund based all its trades on sentiment analysis of tweets . Comment: