The Modern World of Finance: How Social Media Has Changed Investing & How Audit Can Help

The modernization of finance through fintech has brought with it a wave of new investors looking to capitalize on commission-free trading made easy by platforms such as Robinhood. However, this new investor base is consistently choosing to utilize social media as its information source instead of vetted financial documents. By using social media in such a manner, novice investors open themselves up to more information risk, or the risk that their collected information is misleading or false. The purpose of this research project is to analyze how the audit industry, which has historically been the main defense against sources of information risk, can evolve to lend credibility and context to information being circulated via social media and protect the modern investor base. I hope to accomplish this goal by analyzing current research on trading psychology, current audit practices, and current social media content regulation practices