Surveying Social Media Chatter Around The Fresh Market

This week, the Social Market Analytics focus pick is The Fresh Market TFM operating 116 stores in 21 states in the US. The week of May 28 saw the major market indices experience a volatile and sustained sell-off, with the S&P 500 off 3.2% and down 10% from the most recent highs. Shares in TFM moved contrary to broader market trends on news of better than expected earnings results and guidance, but succumbed to negative market sentiment as the Dow posted its worst day of the year on June 1. During the week, TFM appeared twice on SMA's morning Flash Report, which identifies stocks, in the pre-market, with extreme market sentiment levels that are likely to trade with high activity during the upcoming session. In the pre-market of May 30, SMA's processing engine identified TFM as the stock with the most positive market sentiment of any stock tracked in SMA's databases. SMA's sentiment metrics provided initial indication of positive price trends and continuation for TFM as traders integrated the results of the earnings data. In the pre-market of May 30, SMA's S-Score for TFM moved sharply higher to 4.24 (Extreme Positive). The behavior of SMA's S-Score measures market trading sentiment and can provide actionable signals for upcoming price movement. This rapid change in sentiment was coincident with a dramatic spike in TFM's S-Volume metric indicating unusually high social media activity and commentary. The stock closed the session at $56.15, up 14.9%. In the pre-market of May 31, TFM's S-Score reached 2.88 (High Positive) showing persistent positive sentiment in the face of continuing negative sentiment for the broader market. The stock opened the May 31 session at $55.45 and continued to trend up intra-day reflecting positive sentiment to close at $58.12, up 3.51%. On June 1, TFM's S-Score made a sharp decline as the wider market sell-off accelerated and negative sentiment enveloped the trading environment. TFM ended the week at $56.04, down 3.58% for the day, but up 14.7% net for the week. Social Media data are noisy and complex. A single metric is insufficient to understand sentiment behavior over time. Our S-Factors are a family of metrics, including volatility, trend and volume measures, designed to provide a complete view of the social media signature for each security tracked in SMA's databases. SMA's processing engine continuously updates our S-Factors, capturing overnight and pre-market sentiment activities. Clients receive sentiment reports prior to the U.S. market open and intra-day sentiment estimates for tracked stocks, on-demand. We invite the reader to visit our website; investigate our market sentiment metrics for TFM, other stocks, industry sectors, and market indices; participate in our FAQ forum; and sign up for our Flash Report and Newsletter.