The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Stock Market Report 5.16 The Wisdom Of Crowds?

Twitter has, by most estimates, 100 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 tweet are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. These financial sites are followed by a combined 625,000 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.

Among the daily top trending  symbols on stock twitter aggregator StockTwits are Boyd Gaming Corp (NYSE: BYD), Psychiatric Solutions, Inc (NASDAQ: PSYS), MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE: MA), and Copart, Inc (NASDAQ: CPRT)

CNN Money: Euro falls to four-year low http://bit.ly/9COPxt

MarketWatch: Lowe’s expects to see ‘solid demand’ as first-quarter profit and sales rise http://on.mktw.net/dnlDLu

FT: Volcanic ash brings fresh air travel delays: Air travellers face further travel chaos after the volcanic ash cloud… http://bit.ly/aCetoo

WSJ: GM reports an $865 million profit in the first quarter, its first since 2007. Revenue grew 40% to $31.5 billion… http://on.wsj.com/9eXc52

Reuters Biz: Lowe’s profit tops estimates http://link.reuters.com/haf64k

Reuters Biz: Markets punish euro, shares before EU talks http://link.reuters.com/puc64k

Reuters Biz: China’s growth passes peak and more tightening feared http://link.reuters.com/jab64k

Douglas A. McIntyre