The markets are nicely higher today as corporate earnings continue to impress. The ADP employment jobs number released this morning, but the markets have seemed to shrug it off. Across the pond, the Greek Financial Chief was just on the wires saying that a deal on addressing the Greek debt issues was hours away (I'm not holding my breath whatsoever). If this news is true, remember that is only one of the many countries who are struggling under the financial crisis (including Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc).
While the market is up today, I would not chase the strength, as I believe the markets still need to take a breath and sell off a little bit before they can continue to chug higher. I would and am however a buyer on a decent selloffs. I'm still liking the financials and the tech stocks, as both sectors still remain extremely undervalued.
The big news of the day, which EVERYONE will hear about it tonight or read it in the papers tomorrow morning, is that the company Facebook, has filed the appropriate paperwork to come public (by "coming public", I mean that the company will now be able to sell stock to public investors like me or anyone else who has an investment account). Now what do I think about doing such? That's a difficult question and I would refer back to my response on how to approach the Groupon "Initial Public Offering". The IPO will certainly create a TON of buzz, but I believe the hype will be short lived because the company still needs to prove to its shareholders that it can turn its heavy website traffic into a money making endeavor. I think eventually the company will be able to do this, by selling advertisements or even charging users small amounts of money to use the site, but the fact remains there is a lot of unknowns out there. IF however I was going to be a buyer of the stock when it comes public, I would look to buy the stock as early as possible and then flip the stock for a quick gain (as could have been done with Groupon). My concern is that the public and Facebook the company is being valued at too high of a price. Now, an interesting idea for the company to do is to come public, raise some money from the selling of stock (which btw the company is only selling 5% of the company), I would go and by the company "Twitter", and by doing so Facebook would start to own the area of social media all together...BUT that's only food for thought.
I'll follow up with all the hype surrounding Facebook as more developments come out. Tomorrow I will address some individual stocks that I own, as well as some new ideas I've been looking at.
