The Real Facebook Investing Story: How Advisers and Investors Are Using Social Media

By Ross Kenneth Urken

Posted 3:56PM 05/18/12 Posted under: Facebook, Market News

Investment adviser Mark Matson's firm manages more than $3 billion for thousands of investors, and he's a big believer in coaching those clients in the art of prudent financial planning.

But the CEO of Matson Money isn't doing the majority of that advising to people facing him across a mahogany desk or in a wainscoted boardroom at his Mason, Ohio, offices. He's spreading his message on Facebook, Twitter and LiveStream.

Matson is part of a growing trend, one that may make the age-old gripe that financial advisers aren't responsive enough a thing of the past: High-net-worth investors are increasingly connecting with their money managers on social media.

"Today's investor is inundated with so many messages from Wall Street pundits and it's most important for them to understand that prudent investing is rarely the message being offered," Matson said. "That is why each week I employ social media to explain complex investing issues with solid, down-to-earth values that simply make sense."

What Investors Want

Yes, a lot of investors may have put money into a certain lavishly-hyped IPO stock Friday, but plenty of them see Facebook less as a "buy" than as an investing tool.

They have recognized that there's a lot more to do on Facebook than just "liking" pictures of your friend's new baby or tending your livestock in Farmville. Read More

Invest in Latin America...Land of Opportunities! Reach Out 

 

Top Wisconsin Economist: State Is Gaining Jobs

More reliable report reveals better jobs numbers for Wisconsin.

May 16, 2012 • By JOHN MCCORMACK

 In the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race, Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over the jobs numbers under Governor Scott Walker's administration. Republicans have been touting the fact that the unemployment rate has declined from 7.7 percent to 6.8 percent since Governor Scott Walker took office. But Democrats have countered by pointing to a Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report showing that the state lost 29,000 non-farm jobs during the past year--making Wisconsin dead last in that category nationwide.

 

 

So has Wisconsin's employment outlook become better or worse? According to a new and more reliable jobs report, the BLS report cited by the Democrats is inaccurate. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports today, the BLS "figures were based on a sample of 3.5% of the state's employers and are subject to significant revisions." According to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages--which is a hard count of actual jobs in Wisconsin, not a survey--the state actually gained more than 30,000 since Walker took office.
The new jobs report was met with outrage and incredulity from Wisconsin Democrats and liberals in the press. Tom Barrett had accused Walker of trying to "cook the books."
"They brought in a fiction writer. They don’t like their numbers. They’re going to make up their own numbers," Barrett told reporters earlier this week. Read More

There are over 400 million opportunities in Latin America...Reach Out

If you are planning on Running Away....

9 Scary Ways Criminals Use Facebook to Scam and Rob You

By 24/7 Wall St.

This Friday, Facebook will go public in one of the most anticipated IPOs in history. With more than 900 million users, Mark Zuckerberg's expanding social media empire has become a seemingly irreplaceable part of the online experience. Unfortunately, a byproduct of its success is that millions of Americans are far more at risk of falling victim to a number of cyber crimes.

To be sure, cyber crime is nothing new, but the social media revolution has made such crimes much easier to commit. People have "friends" they've never met; they make personal information widely available. And Facebook's hundreds of millions of users are a rich pool of targets. According to an infographic published earlier this year by ZoneAlarm, a leading Internet security software provider, "roughly 4 million Facebook users experience spam on a daily basis, 20% of Facebook users have been exposed to malware," and Facebook receives 600,000 reports of hijacked log-ins every day.

Read more