Tobias Preis - Associate Professor of Behavioural Science & Finance | Staff Directory

Research Interests

Technology is becoming deeply interwoven into the fabric of society. Preis's current research activities are driven by a deep interest in understanding the complex behaviour of financial systems by exploiting big data resources, with the hope that such understanding could contribute to the development of reliable and stable financial systems.

See also his Google Scholar Profile for a list of citations and statistics.

Email: Tobias.Preis@wbs.ac.uk / Tel: 024 765 28422 / Room C3.20

Biography

Tobias Preis is an Associate Professor of Behavioural Science and Finance at Warwick Business School. His recent research has aimed to carry out large scale experiments on complex social and economic systems by exploiting the volumes of data being generated by our interactions with technology.

In 2010, Preis headed a research team which provided evidence that search engine query data and stock market fluctuations are correlated. In 2012, Preis and his colleagues Helen Susannah Moat, H. Eugene Stanley and Steven R. Bishop used Google Trends data to demonstrate that Internet users from countries with a higher per capita GDP are more likely to search for information about the future than information about the past.

Preis received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in 2010 and draws on an interdisciplinary background in physics, economics, and computer science. He has authored more than 30 scientific publications, published a book about the physics of financial markets and acts as a reviewer for more than 15 leading international journals. Preis serves as an Academic Editor of the multidisciplinary journal PLoS ONE.

Preis advises government agencies as well as private companies on potential exploitation of online digital traces. More information can be found on his personal website http://www.tobiaspreis.de.

Recent media coverage of his research includes:

Guardian, UK (2013)
"Which countries are the most forward thinking? See it visualised"

Washington Post, USA (2013)
"Map: The world's most and least 'forward-looking' countries, based on Google searches"

Bloomberg Businessweek, USA (2013)
"What Google Searches About the Future Tell Us About the Present"

New Scientist, UK (2012)
"Online searches for future linked to economic success"

Time Magazine, USA (2010)
"Study: Are Google Searches Affecting the Stock Market?"

Science, USA (2010)
"Can Google Predict the Stock Market?"

British Computing Society, UK (2012)
"Richer people more forward thinking, Google study finds"

WirtschaftsWoche, Germany (2012)
"Physiker macht Börsen-Gewinne mit der Angst von Aktionären"

Recent Publications [all...]

Journal Articles

Moat, H.S., Chester, C., Avakian, A., Kenett, D.Y., Stanley, H.E., Preis, T.. "Quantifying Wikipedia Usage Patterns Before Stock Market Moves"
Scientific Reports 3 (2013): 1801.
Preis, T., Moat, H.S., Stanley, H.E.. "Quantifying Trading Behavior in Financial Markets Using Google Trends"
Scientific Reports 3 (2013): 1684.
Preis, T., Kenett, D.Y., Stanley, H.E., Helbing, D., Ben-Jacob, E.. "Quantifying the Behavior of Stock Correlations Under Market Stress"
Scientific Reports 2 (2012): 752.
Preis, T., Moat, H.S., Stanley, H.E., Bishop, S.R.. "Quantifying the advantage of looking forward"
Scientific Reports 2 (2012): 350.
Block, B.J., Preis, T.. "Computer simulations of the Ising Model on Graphics Processing Units"
European Physical Journal 210 (2012): 133-145.
Feng, L., Li, B., Podobnik, B., Preis, T., Stanley, H.E.. "Linking agent-based models and stochastic models of financial markets"
Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences (USA) 109 (2012): 8388-8393.
Kenett, D.Y., Preis, T., Gur-Gershgoren, G., Ben-Jacob, E.. "Dependency Network and Node Influence: Application to the Study of Financial Markets"
International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos in Applied Sciences and Eng 22 (2012): 1250181.
Kenett, D.Y., Preis, T., Gur-Gershgoren, G., Ben-Jacob, E.. "Quantifying meta-correlations in financial markets"
Europhysics Letters 99 (2012): 38001.
Preis, T., Stanley, H.E.. "Bubble trouble"
Physics World (2011): 29-32.
Preis, T., Schneider, J.J., Stanley, H.E.. "Switching processes in financial markets"
Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences (USA) 108 (2011): 7674-7678.
Preis, T.. "Econophysics—complex correlations and trend switchings in financial time series"
European Physical Journal 194 (2011): 5-86.
Preis, T.. "GPU-computing in econophysics and statistical physics"
European Physical Journal 194 (2011): 87-119.
Block, B., Virnau, P., Preis, T.. "Multi-GPU accelerated multi-spin Monte Carlo simulations of the 2D Ising model"
Computer Physics Communications 181 (2010): 1549-1556.
Preis, T., Stanley, H.E.. "Switching phenomena in a system with no switches"
Journal Of Statistical Physics 138 (2010): 431-446.
Stanley, H.E., Buldyrev, S.V., Franzese, G., Havlin, S., Mallamace, F., Kumar, P., Plerou, V., Preis, T.. "Correlated randomness and switching phenomena"
Physica A 389 (2010): 2880-2893.
Preis, T., Reith, D., Stanley, H.E.. "Complex dynamics of our economic life on different scales: insights from search engine query data"
Philosophical Transactions of Royal Soc A: Maths Physical & Engineering Sciences 368 (2010): 5707.
Preis, T.. "Simulating the microstructure of financial markets"
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 221 (2010): 012019.

Books

Preis, T.. "Ökonophysik: Die Physik des Finanzmarktes"
Wiesbaden (2011)

Book Chapters

Preis, T.. "Price-Time Priority and Pro Rata Matching in an Order Book Model of Financial Markets"
Econophysics of Order-driven Markets (2011): 65-72.
Preis, T., Stanley, H.E.. "Trend Switching Processes in Financial Markets"
Econophysics Approaches to Large-Scale Business Data and Financial Crisis (2010): 3-26.

Dr Tobias Preis

Associate Professor of Behavioural Science & Finance

Research Interests

Biography