Sentimental Analysis of Web Financial Reviews
Opportunities and Challenges
Changxuan Wan, Tengjiao Jiang, Dexi Liu and Guoqiong Liao
School of Information and Technology, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China
Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Data and Knowledge Engineering, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics,
Nanchang, China
wanchangxuan@263.net, tj_jiang@163.com, dexiliu@gmail.com, liaoguoqiong@163.com
Keywords: Web Financial Reviews, Web Financial Indexes, Opinion Targets, Sentiment Words, Sentiment Analysis.
Abstract: Web financial reviews are real-time, comprehensive and authentic. The construction and quantification of
Web financial indexes based on Web financial reviews is of great significance for the financial early
warning for enterprises. Comparing with product reviews and news commentaries, in Web financial reviews,
the opinion targets have more diverse compositions, the frequencies of opinion targets’ occurrence vary
greatly, and the sentiment words’ have more diverse parts of speech. These characteristics make the
extraction of opinion targets, the construction of Web financial indexes, and opinion targets-based
sentimental analysis all more complicated, posing new challenges to natural language processing.
1 INTRODUCTION
With the aggravation of the global financial
market’s instability, more attention is paid to the
financial crisis prediction for enterprises. Currently,
in most studies, financial crisis prediction is done by
a prediction model established based on the data in
financial statements.
However, there are several drawbacks in using
financial statements. First, financial statements are
easily manipulated; second, data in financial statements
are static, ignoring the characteristic of time series
of enterprise financial ratios; thirdly, financial
statements are released yearly, the data in them are
not real-time; and fourthly, the influence of historic
accumulation of financial ratios on present situation is
not considered. Therefore, determining risks merely
based on financial indicators in financial statements
is doomed to cause deviation of the prediction.
According to the theory of modern corporation
performance evaluation, in the era of knowledge
economy, comprehensive performance evaluation
equation must be introduced into the performance
evaluation of corporations; various non-financial
indicators should be added on the basis of conventional
financial indicators.
Comparing with financial indicators, the biggest
advantage of non-financial indicators is that they are
future-oriented, while financial indicators are past-
oriented. In The Choice of Performance Measures in
Annual Bonus Contracts published by Wharton in
1995, it is pointed out that non-financial indicators
are better indicators reflecting the management’s
performance and the company’s development
prospects. Unlike financial indicators, non-financial
indicators can not be obtained by calculating
financial data, so the non-financial index also has
some shortcomings, such as data collection and
quantify are difficult. Then, how should we
overcome the aforementioned drawbacks of
financial indicators and non-financial indicators and
introduce non-financial indicators on the basis of
financial indicators to establish a uniform indicator
evaluation system?
With the arrival of the era of big data, large
amount of financial reviews occur on the Internet
every minute. Those reviews cover all aspects of
enterprises’ past and current operation and prospects
of enterprises, and contain thorough analyses of
enterprises’ financial and non-financial indicators.
Therefore, not only are Web financial reviews real-time
and readily available, they are also comprehensive
and have wide coverage. In addition, Web financial
reviews contain expert interpretation, practical
experience of investors, as well as customer experience,
thus are in-depth and authentic. These characteristics
of Web financial reviews, on the one hand, overcome
the drawbacks of indicators from financial statements,
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