The Twitter-24/7 Wall St. Market Report (3/17/2011) Jobless Claims, Fedex Earnings

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.

CNNMoney: Consumer prices rise 2.1% over last 12 months, increasing 0.5% in February; First-time jobless claims fall to 385,000 in latest week.

Reuters: February consumer price rise biggest in 1-1/2 yearshttp://dlvr.it/KZl3v

Reuters: Jobless claims fall, 4-week average at 2-1/2 yr lowhttp://dlvr.it/KZl3Y

MarketWatch: U.S. consumer prices rise 0.5% in Februaryhttp://on.mktw.net/gMJHyv

MarketWatch: FedEx shares gain 4% as shipping giant sees ‘strong demand’ in current quarter http://on.mktw.net/gmFfjD

Yahoo! Finance: FedEx profit seen up but curbed by oil and stormshttp://yhoo.it/gy7YB2

Douglas A. McIntyre