Twitter  has, by most estimates, 175 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million Twitter users. It raises the question of whether there is wisdom in crowds.

24/7 Wall St. will look at the Twitter posts at Reuters Biz, WSJ, Financial Times, CNN Money, MarketWatch, CNBC, and 24/7 Wall St. each day to see
which stocks are most frequently mentioned. It is clear that in this area of social media these tweets are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. Together, these financial sites are followed by nearly 1,000,000 Twitter users, which makes them a sizeable sample of Wall St.’s interests. In some cases, we will publish the actual tweets from the sites.

Reuters: Housing starts see biggest drop since 1984http://dlvr.it/KSJRN

Reuters: February PPI increase fastest in 1-1/2 yearshttp://dlvr.it/KSJQx

Zerohedge: Analysts who downgraded APPL prepare to be put in witness protection program

MarketWatch: U.S. construction data for February show sharp drops in housing starts, building permits http://on.mktw.net/iddT0x

MSNBC: U.S. wholesale prices jumped in Februaryhttp://on.msnbc.com/fRpOQY

CNNMoney: Number of new homes started falls 22.5% in February to 479,000 annual rate, while building permits decline 8.2%, government says. $$

Douglas A. McIntyre