Exploratory Study on the Behavior of the Brazilian Financial Market Using Google Trends

Search engines changed the way people find relevant information on the internet. We suggest that investors utilize these internet tools during their investment decision process and that the datasets generated by search engines are related to stock market movements. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between this social phenomenon and moves on the Brazilian stock market. Following previous studies, we analyze the correlation between the Google query volumes for terms related to a specific index of the Brazilian stock market (Ibovespa) and stock market metrics (Open, Closing, High and Low prices). Our results presented a positive correlation between the investors’ attention, represented by the Google search volumes, and the market prices. These results suggest that the Google Trends data are more positively correlated to the highs of the financial data, suggesting that investors tend to search more on the web when the market is reaching its peak or vice versa. This article highlights the potential that this source of information has on the understanding of the Brazilian stock market.