Investor Sentiment and Stock Market Performance in the Big Data Environment

This study investigates the influence of social media sentiment on stock market performance by analyzing investor comments on the Snowball platform for Yunnan Baiyao (00538.SZ) and CICC (601995.SH) (China International Capital Corporation) between July and September 2024. Using web-scraping technology and sentiment analysis, the research categorizes comments into positive, neutral, or negative, applying regression models to investigate the relationship between the number of posts reflecting investor sentiment and stock trading performance, while controlling for variables such as company assets, P/E ratio, and market turnover rate. The results reveal that both positive and negative sentiments significantly affect stock trading behavior, with negative sentiment having a stronger impact. Additionally, company size and market fundamentals consistently influence trading volume and turnover rate. The study concludes by recommending that investors rely more on fundamental analysis rather than short-term sentiment fluctuations to achieve long-term stability in their investments.