Paul Hawtin is not only the founder of the Twitter hedge fund Derwent Capital – no, on Monday he is launching an online trading platform called DCM Dealer. The platform will enable retail investors to trade equities, FX and commodities using real-time sentiments based on data from Twitter and other social media channels.

He will start with 250 UK equities, FX and commodities contracts but according to an article in the WSJ expansion will be quick. Pan-european stocks “within weeks” and US and Asian equities next month. Wow.

There has been a lot of discussion over the past year about the correlation of sentiments and stock market movements. This will be the first time that this source of information will be connected to a trading community. And social media data will be used by traders to (hopefully for them) make better buying and selling decisions. I will be keeping an eye on this one.