That's where Google's algorithm can help. Type some key words into the Google search bar - or Yahoo!, Ask or whatever - and the algorithm is smart enough to guess what you may be looking for. That's because it knows what everyone else has been asking and its guesses are dictated by those requests. In that sense it can reveal the market's 'thinking'.
Tap into those thoughts by inserting three or four relevant words into the search bar. Keep it simple and open-ended; you don't want to trick the search engine into giving you a biased suggestion.
So, for example, insert 'should I buy'. That's about as open-ended as it can get - Google does not even know you are thinking about investing. First up, it suggests; 'Should I buy a ps4?' (that's Sony's PlayStation 4). Interestingly, however, Google's fifth suggestion - after 'Destiny' (more computer games), an Apple Mac and a diesel car - is, "should I buy Tesco shares?" In other words, more than anything else - according to google.co.uk at least - and of all the assets investors could buy, they are asking whether shares in the deeply-troubled grocer are now the ones to go for. And if the question is being asked by so many, at the very least we might conclude that the worst of the selling is over, so the next stage can only be buying for recovery.
We can even check the latent enthusiasm for Tesco (TSCO) by asking the opposite, and equally open-ended question, "should I sell . . .". That prompts some interesting suggestions, but selling Tesco's shares trails in ninth. That's miles behind the notion that we might want to sell our homes and rent - what does that tell us about the UK's housing market? - and it's far behind the more prominent suggestion to sell shares in Royal Mail (RMG) and in Standard Life (SL.). It's understandable that the nation's 'Sids' should be popping that question about the newly privatised Royal Mail into a search engine. More intriguing is why selling shares in life assurer Standard Life (SL.) should figure so prominently.
Be warned, however, search engines are influenced by the prominence of key websites, by key phrases and by strings between posts. It takes only a few linked postings to give a subject surprising prominence. For example, you might think the phrase, "investing in shares is...", would prompt Google to give an insight into investors' long-term bullishness or bearishness. Not so. The top suggestion is: "Investing in shares is halal or haram". That's not what you would expect. It's there because the discussion of that subject among muslims - and those who would take their business - forms a chain of one lively opinion after another, many of them delivered via YouTube. More conventional responses to the prompt - such as 'investing in shares is not complex' and 'is worth it' (both of which are bullish) - have a lower impact.
Similarly, Google's intemperate response to technical analysis - assessing the prospects for markets using charts - is not quite what it seems. Feed Google the prompt, "technical analysis is..." and you get the blunt response, 'bullshit'. Yet that's because way back when someone somewhere used that adjective to describe the discipline - let's face it, it springs easily to mind - and it spread through the websphere, becoming the word with which technical analysis is attacked or against which it must be defended. Not that technical analysis gets a good press anyway. The second and third responses to the prompt are 'nonsense' and 'a fallacy'.
Ditto momentum investing. That's 'bad for your wealth' followed by 'a losing strategy', according to the Google algorithm. Meanwhile - and sticking to investment styles - day traders are 'losers' and 'idiots', but value investing gets a better response. It's either 'dead' or 'the best'. More bullish still, tech stocks are 'coming of age' (but commentators have been saying that at least since the turn of the millennium) and 'the cheapest in seven years'. True, that judgement related to a brisk discussion in the websphere in the spring of 2013, but perhaps it still holds good.
So can you construct an all-encompassing investment strategy using Google? Maybe. At least, it will suggest that China's economy is collapsing along with the oil price; that bond prices are more likely to fall than to rise, as is the gold price. But happily - and unequivocally - in response to the prompt, 'share prices will...', Google only suggests they will rise.
Using Google in this way is fun and occasionally insightful - Tesco, for example - but don't take it too seriously. After all, to the prompt, 'the world will end in...', Google still suggests 2014 as the most likely year followed by... err... 2012.
