The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Market Report (12/17/2010) Ireland Trouble, M&A Record

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

CNN Money: Visa, MasterCard sink on debit card fee cap planhttp://bit.ly/g1TZMm

Reuters Biz: Spain bad loan ratio rises to near 15-year high http://dlvr.it/Bb74v

Reuters: Moody’s slashes Ireland to Baa1, warns more may be aheadhttp://dlvr.it/BZ1YG

MarketWatch: Marshall & Ilsley shares rally as Canada’s BMO strikes $4.1 billion stock-swap dealhttp://on.mktw.net/f3ApeP

MarketWatch: Moody’s downgrades Ireland, citing uncertainty over economic outlook http://on.mktw.net/ifU0zc

Zerohedge: Goldman Removes Visa From Conviction Buy List After Stock Plunges http://is.gd/iTBHj

Zerohedge: Moody’s Downgrades Ireland From Aa2 to Baa1 – 5 Notch Downgrade, But Still Investment Grade http://is.gd/iSVTA

Yahoo! Finance: How Apple Will Become the Most Valuable Company in Americahttp://yhoo.it/gFXb97

Yahoo! Finance: M&A tops $2.2 trillion in first yearly rise since 2007http://yhoo.it/eC4Vhp

Douglas A. McIntyre