There are 500 million tweets a day. At Bloomberg, we estimate about 500,000, or 0.1%, are financially relevant.

And of those, perhaps 50,000 are worth monitoring, 50 break news and five are market moving events

But the value of that handful can be huge. Aside from the steady flow from President Trump, a labor deal between General Motors and the UAW, as well as many of the twists and turns in Brexit talks appeared first on social media.

It’s been six years since the SEC approved Twitter for disclosure, prompting more and more companies to use the service. We look at Twitter as just the beginning.

Bloomberg has recently included posts from Facebook and may add other non-traditional social sources to capture news as well as insight relevant to investors.

Monitoring the flow of social media also provides a way to measure engagement. As the accompanying chart shows, Twitter posts often spike when companies are in crisis.

Tracking those volumes provides a way to gauge investor interest and sentiment.