Can network public opinion predict stock market return?

Stock return prediction is an important financial topic that has gained a great deal of attention from both researchers and investors. This paper investigated the relationship between network public opinion and the return prediction of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) 180 index by support vector regression (SVK). The findings show that predicted stock return direction was successful for 19 out of 22 samples, and the accuracy of prediction was 86.36 percent. These findings suggest that network public opinion has a very strong relationship to stock performances, and the stock market is sensitive to network public opinion.