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Wikipedia Attention Spike

Updated dailyData needs: mediumlong onlyshort onlylong short

2011

#10 wikipedia_attention_spike — Da-Engelberg-Gao 2011 + Pyun 2024.

In plain terms

Abnormal Wikipedia pageviews for a ticker predict a 2-week rally then a year-out reversal. Cleaner than Google Trends per Pyun 2024.

How it works

Da-Engelberg-Gao (2011 JF) "In Search of Attention" established that abnormal retail attention predicts a 2-week price run-up followed by a year-out reversal. Pyun (2024, SSRN 5172055) extends the work to Wikipedia pageviews and shows the Wiki signal dominates Google Trends in OOS tests — no rate limit, no normalisation-window confound, cleaner page identity per company. Signal is log(views / 90d median); long on >σ spikes for 2 weeks, short the reversal at 6 months when no earnings event explains the spike.

Live results

14 times picked on its own · 133 times inside a blend (128 beat the stock) · updated 2026-07-06

This strategy is a frequent ingredient in blends that combine a few strategies on one stock. It has contributed to 133 such blended picks (128 of which beat simply holding the stock). Picking it on its own is only one of the ways it shows up.

How its picks scored vs. buy & hold

Each pick is graded on a recent year it was never tuned on, against simply owning the same stock

Where its edge concentrates

Share of picks in each company-size group that beat buy & hold

How often it trades

Active vs. patient. Bars on the left mean it waits for rare setups; bars on the right mean it trades often

Return vs. buy & hold

How much each pick beat or trailed simply owning the stock over the test year (extreme microcap moves trimmed)

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Data dependencies

Daily prices
Adjusted-close OHLCV for every US-listed ticker; primary price feed.
Wikipedia pageviews
Wikimedia daily pageview counts joined to ticker pages.

Expected edge

Tested over: 2008-2022 (Pyun)

2-week long ~3%/month; 6-month short basket on attention-without-earnings

Example tickers where this is likely to fire

GME MSTR DJT

Illustrative only, the signal fires based on the live data, not a fixed list.

Related families

Attention SpikeReal-World & Alternative Data

When Google searches for a ticker spike abnormally, retail piles in and pushes the price up for about two weeks. That attention-driven run-up then unwinds over the following six to twelve months, so the strategy rides the pop and later shorts the fade.

Borrow Rate SpikePrice & Market Behavior

When the cost to borrow a stock spikes, shorts are paying premium to bet against it — usually a bearish signal, except at extremes where they get squeezed.

Explore Wikipedia Attention Spike on alphactor.ai

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