To the moon: Retail investor attention and sentiment across asset types in online media
Michael L. Smith, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Valerie Kilders · 2026
Read To the moon: Retail investor attention and sentiment across asset types in online media by Michael L. Smith, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Valerie Kilders (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13252755.txt.
Description
Michael Smith, Nicole Olynk Widmar, and Valerie Kilders track online investor chatter in this 2026 study whose title nods to a popular market slogan. Social media now hosts huge retail investing communities that can amplify, and sometimes coordinate, market moves.
Using a listening platform, the team collected weekly mentions and mood for four topics from 2020 to 2023: the United States dollar, gold, cryptocurrencies, and attention-shocked stocks such as meme stocks. They tested how chatter reacted to events like regional bank failures and famous short squeezes. Commentary volume stayed high throughout, and the authors find online communities increasingly shape how the public talks about markets.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Michael L. Smith, Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, Valerie Kilders |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 51261 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |