The Wall Street Journal published an online interactive asking readers to set their own price for Facebook stock. Regardless of what happens during Facebook’s IPO tomorrow, or how badly it crashes after, I’m curious to see how accurate the crowd’s predictions will be.

I don’t know the sample size for these data, but since the May 3 prediction of $60, the crowd’s estimate has swung as high at $191 on May 6^th and as low as $25 this morning.  The current price of $101 makes me wonder if Facebook’s price throughout the day Friday will bear any resemblance to these predictions.

My guess is that the crowd will predict the price relatively well, and could guess even closer if the WSJ price prediction updated more quickly and there were a larger sample size.

Public sentiment, one of the fuzzy influences on market prices, may be the most unpredictable aspects of investing.  Crowd-sourced estimates have great potential as market indicators, and some tech-driven financial start-ups are taking advantage of the online collective intelligence to create better, more innovative investment products. One company we like is Estimize, which takes the ideas behind this WSJ interactive graphic and applies them to markets, using crowd estimates for all kinds of company metrics.

And will this data give investors an edge? Time will tell, but we like to see other companies applying technology and innovation to the world of investment. QuantConnect is also incorporating the crowd and open data to offer the best atmosphere for developing innovative algorithm investment systems, which we expect will translate into exceptional investments.