Taking Stock

So if you bought Facebook stock when it came out last week you were a genius. Or an idiot. Or a dupe. Or maybe an ingeniously duped idiot; it's hard to tell because I've read just about every opinion under the sun.

I'm no money manager, but I've learned a couple of things about stock offerings. One, if you judge whether a stock is a success or failure based on two days of trading, you're likely to be making someone somewhere some money and that someone isn't you. Money managers do well because they spend all day watching this stuff and building data streams about stock behaviors. They do this for months and sometimes the better part of a year before they start trying to guess what a stock price will do. They do not scan the paper's Dow-Jones report, log on to the ol' home computer-doohickey and dash off a half-dozen knee-jerk trades.

And as this piece notes, the purpose of an initial stock offering is to raise cash for a company. A stock purchase is a purchase of the rights of a company's potential future profits in exchange for cash now. So Facebook's word for the offering probably isn't disaster, as this fellow explains. People bought lots of Facebook stock, which made Facebook money. I'm going to guess that merits a "Like," whether on a button or real life.

(H/T Dustbury)