Investors finally have the answer to where Facebook Inc. will choose to list shares when the social media powerhouse starts trading this year.
Say hello to NASDAQ: FB.
Facebook had no comment as to why it chose Nasdaq. The news was reported in The New York Times citing a source speaking on anonymity.
Facebook plans to raise up to $5 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), which it filed for Feb. 1. It's expected to start trading in May.
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Don't look now but there's another giant bubble out there. It's so big it rivals subprime.
I'm talking about the student loan bubble.
Recently, the outstanding volume of student loans passed $1 trillion. What's more bothersome is that the average individual amount owed by new college graduates has passed $25,000.
With college costs zooming upwards faster than inflation, this is rapidly becoming another subprime mortgage-like sinkhole.
Just like subprime, the problem is that people of modest means are being suckered by high-pressure salesmen into taking on too much debt.
The difference is that since student loans are government guaranteed and can't be released in bankruptcy, the burdens will be paid by the unfortunate ex-students and the U.S. taxpayer.
The standard justification for soaring higher education costs is a simple one.
The United States needs to maintain an educational lead in order for its wage levels to remain above those of its competitors.
I'm talking largely about emerging markets, which have been helped enormously by modern communications, making global sourcing much easier than it was.
There are two problems with this view.
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Even with the recent dip, stocks are off to their best start since 1998.
The Dow ended the first quarter at 13,212, up 8%. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 12% and the Nasdaq finished with a whopping nearly 19% gain.
And, if history is any guide, April should continue to bode well for stocks.
According to data from Schaffer's Investment Research, the S&P 500 has risen every April for the past five years.
In all, the index has returned an average of 4.5% for the same period, making April the best month for the market by far.
So, with all signals pointing at go, where should investors look for a jolt?
Perhaps they could take a sniff at what's brewing over at Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX).
The Seattle-based coffee giant recently launched its first Evolution Fresh juice bar.
Located in the tony town of Bellevue, WA, not far from the company's storied headquarters, the opening has been highly anticipated, not much unlike coffee junkies waiting for their caffeine fix.
For Starbucks fans and investors, Evolution Fresh marks something of a departure.
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Stocks tumbled Wednesday due to investor unease, and contributed to slips in tech stocks including SanDisk Corp. (Nasdaq: SNDK), Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM). Markets fell after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve meeting released Tuesday signaled no new stimulus from Team Bernanke. The Fed believes the U.S. economy is improving […]
by David Zeiler
U.S. President Barack Obama today (Wednesday) signed the STOCK Act into law – a law that doesn't go nearly far enough to rein in Capitol Hill corruption.
A majority of members in both chambers of Congress stymied the efforts of a handful of legislators to make a much tougher law that would have done more to restrict how government officials can profit from non-public information learned on the job.
"This is bipartisanship, but it's not the kind of bipartisanship, cooperation, intended or not, that this nation deserves," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, during in a 20-minute floor speech before the vote. "Today's actions only serve the desires of obscure and powerful Wall Street interests."
Grassley was among the few to vote against the bill, which passed 96-3.
The Senate passed the House version of the bill unaltered. Back in February both chambers passed different versions of the bill, with the Senate version having the stricter provisions.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, opted to vote on the weaker House version of the bill instead of sending the bill to a conference committee.
The new law will have some effect, albeit a minimal one.
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The ADP employment report released today (Wednesday) showed more job gains for March as private companies continued hiring – but remain at a slower-than-necessary rate for a healthy recovery.
According to a report issued Wednesday by payroll-processing company ADP, the private sector added 209,000 jobs last month, pretty much in line with what was expected. That was slightly lower than forecasts for 217,000 jobs gained, and a decrease from 230,000 jobs added in February.
The number was slightly lower than the pace set in February. Industry analysts say the speed of adding jobs needs to move much faster to push unemployment down to a healthy level.
Small businesses, those with fewer than 50 employees, continued to make up about half of all private sector job gains, hiring 100,000 people.
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Thanks to the millions of starry-eyed dreamers, the Mega Millions Lottery was finally worth $656 million before the winning tickets were sold.
As I discussed yesterday, that's a fair chunk of money– far too much to spend at once.
But it is fun to think about.
It also makes for a great discussion about how you would begin to invest such an enormous sum.
But here's the thing. Whether you have $656,000 or the entire $656,000,000 jackpot, your thinking is basically the same.
In this case, it is just a matter of scale. It may sound odd but it's true. Let me explain.
If you were lucky enough to hit the big one, here's how you might want to handle the winning ticket.
Before you did anything, your first decision is whether to take the jackpot in a lump-sum or in annual payments.
Admittedly, after tax and discounting, Saturday's jackpot comes to only $355 million as a lump-sum, or 26 annual payments of $19 million.
The discount rate between the two is only about 2.6%, so if you think you can make more than that on your money, you should probably take it as a lump sum.
Maybe if you wanted to be very conservative on your investments, or thought the stock market was hopelessly overvalued, an annuity would be preferable.
For example, if you had won that amount in early 2000 you might have invested some of the lump sum in the dotcoms before the crash. In that case, you'd have been better off with the annuity!
But market crashes aside, generally, the lump sum looks a better deal.
Then there's the amount you are going to need for your spending spree. I discussed this yesterday suggesting that a spending spree of more than $30-40 million, spread over a year or so, would probably not make you happy and might incur costs for the future.
In particular, you need to be careful not to buy large items that incur running costs.
By all means buy a really nice sailboat, but a $100 million yacht or a house that requires a full staff of servants are likely to drain your resources in years to come, and could lead you eventually to ruin.
To avoid that it probably makes sense to devise a budget for how much you can spend.
If you're fairly young, ideally you would want the money after your spending spree – about $300 million– to last you the rest of your life.
With interest rates so low and inflation a risk, that means you shouldn't plan on spending more than about $10 million a year in today's money, with spending perhaps increasing along with inflation.
That should be ample for all the toys and lifestyle you want, again provided you haven't bought Downton Abbey or equivalent in a yacht.
The next thing to be clear about is that you shouldn't invest all the money in the stock market at once.
Here's why.
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When Alfred Lord Tennyson penned "Locksley Hall" in 1835, he surmised, "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
Had Tennyson been an American just ten short years later, he might have chosen baseball as the focus of his young man's interest.
According to what's now acknowledged as popular myth, baseball didn't officially come into being until 1839, when Abner Doubleday reputedly "invented" the game in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The first official game – based on rules codified in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright – wasn't played until June 19, 1846.
The host New York Knickerbockers lost that game – contested against a group of local cricket players dubbed the New York Nine – by the embarrassing score of 23-1.
Whether or not that was the first game remains unclear, with some dating baseball's beginning to 1791 in Pittsfield, Mass., and others tracing its origins back to Europe earlier in the 18th century.
But regardless of when and where it began one thing is certain: Baseball became America's favorite game.
Quickly dubbed the "national pastime," its popularity continues to grow.
Though the recent recession did cut into attendance at Major League Baseball games somewhat, 73,425,665 fans visited ballparks in 2011.
That's down only slightly from 2007 when 79,502,524 filed through the turnstiles, setting an all-time record.
And, while this year probably won't quite challenge the 2007 high, another increase is expected during the 2012 season, which opens today at the new ballpark of the renamed Miami Marlins in downtown Miami. Six more opening-day games will follow on Thursday.
Revenues for Major League teams also continue to grow, approaching $7 billion in 2011, including television contracts and concession and memorabilia sales.
Meanwhile, the value of the teams themselves is certainly not in question – not given the $2 billion just offered for the L.A. Dodgers by a group headed by basketball great Magic Johnson.
Strangely, however, for a sport considered the national pastime and drawing nearly 75 million fans a year, with many more watching on TV and listening to games on the radio, baseball offers a very limited number of opportunities for the average investor.
Indeed, only three of the 30 major league teams are currently owned by publicly traded companies, and baseball represents only a modest portion of their total businesses.
That contrasts with the past, when such notable firms as The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), Anheuser-Busch (InBev NV ADR) (NYSE: BUD) and others owned baseball franchises.
Thus, if you want to be an actual owner of a major league baseball team today – at least through your portfolio – you're limited to buying shares in:
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by David Zeiler
There's an inherent flaw in Google Inc.'s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android operating system.
The flaw isn't a technical glitch.
In fact, most agree that Google's Android is a first-rate mobile operating system that has gotten better with each update. Some even prefer it to Apple's iOS.
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Molson Coors Brewing Co. (NYSE: TAP), the Denver-based maker of Carling lager, agreed Tuesday to acquire StarBev LP for $3.54 billion (2.65 billion euros).
The acquisition will add beer brands such as Staropramen and provide Molson with an entry route into Central and Eastern Europe, the world's second largest beer market.
StarBev, headquartered in Amsterdam and Prague, operates nine breweries in Central and Eastern Europe.
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