The Twitter-24/7 Market Report (2/3/2011) Jobless Claims, Retail Sales

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

Yahoo! Finance: Retailers report surprisingly solid sales gains for January despite series of snowstorms http://yhoo.it/fvwhak

CNNMoney: Number of people filing for initial jobless benefits drops 42,000 in the latest week to 415,000, government says. $$

MarketWatch: U.S. weekly jobless claims drop by 42,000; productivity riseshttp://on.mktw.net/hHGwe2

WSJ: Breaking: U.S. first-time jobless claims fell by 42,000 in latest week to 415,000. http://wsj.com

MSNBC Business: Retailers post surprisingly solid Jan. saleshttp://on.msnbc.com/eKZHZ7

Yahoo! Finance: S&P says no plans to cut U.S. rating in medium termhttp://yhoo.it/i4CQI0

Reuters Biz: BJ’s exploring options, including sale http://dlvr.it/Fjjdb

CNBC: BJ’s Weighs Putting Self Up For Sale; Shares Surgehttp://cnbc.com/id/41404458 $BJ #StockMarket#CorporateNews

MarketWatch: European Central Bank leaves key rate unchanged at 1%http://on.mktw.net/fbOEPF

Douglas A. McIntyre