by Alexei Oreskovic and Olivia Oran

Facebook Inc is set to raise up to $18.4 billion in its IPO and become the first U.S. company to be worth more than $100 billion at its debut, as investors bet on a big pop in the stock when it begins trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

Frenzied demand, especially from individual investors hoping to buy into an Internet juggernaut that touches hundreds of millions of people every day, is expected to drive Facebook well above its initial public offering price of $38 a share, which was already at the top end of its target of $34 to $38.

“It will be bananas tomorrow [today],” said Greencrest Capital analyst Max Wolff. “This is all about the future, so it really is a lottery ticket.

“The stock could initially rise and then it could go parabolic on a wave of retail investor hope. These shares are going to trade on hope. I do not know how to value hope,” said Wolff.

Facebook is selling an up to 18 percent stake in the company at a valuation of $104 billion, comparable to the market worth of Amazon.com Inc, and exceeding that of Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc combined.

The highly anticipated offering, the largest by a U.S. Internet company and the second-largest in U.S. history after Visa Inc, vaults the eight-year-old Facebook to the front ranks of corporate America.

It will give 28-year-old Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, a net worth of nearly $20 billion.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "Facebook wraps up IPO, set for big Friday pop" ]

by Adam Shell

Investors looking for a safe place to stash cash and a way to sidestep Europe’s deepening debt crisis are dumping risky assets such as stocks and piling into the perceived haven of U.S. government bonds, driving down yields Thursday to new all-time lows.

In what Wall Street dubs the “risk-off” trade, huge amounts of capital is flowing into long-term Treasury bonds. The yield on the 10-year note, which moves in the opposite direction of price, dipped to a record low 1.69% Thursday.

It hit its previous low of 1.73% on Sept. 22, when markets were fretting over issues similar to ones they are dealing with now — the possibility of Greece defaulting on its debt and dropping out of the eurozone, and the potential aftershocks from that.

The plunge in rates has also been driven by renewed hopes that Europe’s woes and a still-tepid economy at home boosts the odds that the Federal Reserve will inject more stimulus into the system to support the economy, says Gregory Whiteley, a portfolio manager who trades government securities at DoubleLine Capital.

“It seems like every time we get to new lows (on the 10-year note) people say we can’t go any lower, but we do,” says Whiteley.

“Uncertainty is what motivates people to buy Treasuries,” he says, adding that investors are selling riskier commodities and stocks and reinvesting the proceeds in U.S. debt.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "Yields hit record low: Fears ratchet up Treasury traffic" ]

WW Editor’s Note: You don’t have to succumb to less than 2% annual rates to secure your money. You can get conservative, but above money-market, returns ON your principal or deposited amount. These vehicles may not  be as super-liquid as “cash equivalents” but they will offer reliable, higher-yielding interest payouts. Learn more…

by Nicole Ostrow

Men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 10 percent chance of outliving those who drank no coffee, while women had a 13 percent advantage, according to research published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute is the largest to compare coffee drinkers with those who avoid it to determine whether the beverage can delay the risk of dying from ailments such as heart disease, diabetes or respiratory illness, said Neal Freedman, the lead study author. It’s unclear why coffee may be beneficial and more research is needed to study that question, he said.

The results “offer a little bit of reassurance to coffee drinkers who like drinking coffee that it won’t affect health,” said Freedman, an investigator at the NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Rockville, Maryland, in a May 14 telephone interview. “It doesn’t seem to increase one’s risk of dying.”

Still, “the association between coffee and mortality has been unclear,” he said. “This is an observational study so we don’t know for certain coffee is having a cause and effect.”

Coffee wasn’t associated with a lower risk of dying from cancer in women. In men who drank the most coffee, there was a slightly higher chance of dying from cancer, the research reported.

The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, may not reflect long-term patterns of coffee consumption and information on how the coffee was prepared also wasn’t included in the research.

Freedman said there are more than 1,000 compounds of coffee that may affect health. More studies are needed on the compounds and the effects coffee has on the death risk in people with a previous history of disease.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "Coffee May Help Drinkers Live Longer, U.S. Study Suggests" ]

by Charles Sizemore

Suds stocks fall into one of two categories:

Megabrews with world-dominating brands — companies like Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD), Molson Coors Brewing Company (NYSE:TAP) and SABMiller (PINK:SBMRY).

Smaller companies that produce mostly craft beers, such as the Boston Beer Company (NYSE:SAM), the maker of the popular Sam Adams, and Craft Brew Alliance (NASDAQ:BREW), which makes smaller brands Kona and Red Hook.

Either option can make a fine investment choice, but you should understand that the rationales for buying are very different.

BUD, TAP and SBMRY essential operate a megabrand beer cartel. Their businesses are safe and relatively stable, though not particularly exciting.

They also tend to be fairly recession-resistant. If anything, consumers often trade down from more expensive craft beers to cheaper mass-market beers when times are hard. For investors just looking for consistent returns, this kind of consistency is attractive.

SAM and BREW, being smaller and nimbler, are better growth stories. SAM in particular has enjoyed fantastic earnings growth in recent years, and its niche placement as a seller of premium beers allows it to generate higher returns on equity.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "Beer Stocks: Crack One Open" ]

A mega-dose of inspiration and epic moments that embrace the idea of “now or never.”

Song by New York pop artist, Outasight.

from the M4 Research team

Did your trading or investing account earn you 42% profits (or more) in 2011?

Would you like to join a fully-catered automated service with investors who did?

We are proud to be the managing publisher of an investment service that takes automated forex trading to the next level.

This service provides full-scale hosting and monitoring of the trading system as an all-inclusive package. Its unique programming provides risk-mitigated trading by focusing on only one currency pair.

With an exclusive member area also included in the subscription rate, subscribers receive access to monthly webinars, tutorials, and more.

The best part is, you pay a flat subscription rate — no matter how large your account grows — and you keep all the profits for yourself.

If you’re even remotely intrigued, be sure to watch this video in its entirety….

 by David Kirkpatrick

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg aspires to build the identity infrastructure for the planet. That is an overweening ambition, but not an irrational one given its astonishing success thus far. Facebook plays a larger role in human interactions worldwide than any other company.

It is increasingly a universal directory—a place where you can find and reach anyone even if you don’t know their email address or phone number. More than 900 million people routinely spend time there.

It may be most helpful to think of Facebook as a movement—that’s a word Zuckerberg himself has used since 2007. To understand where he may take the company, think of him more as a social revolutionary than a businessperson.

“I often say inside the company that my goal was never to just create a company,” Zuckerberg told me in May 2009 when I was reporting my book, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting The World. Even then he faced criticism for his attitudes, but like many of his era, he believes the point of business is more than to make money.

“A lot of people have been misinterpreting that as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things,” he continued. “That’s not actually it at all. You need to do those things to succeed in any meaningful way.

“Building a good economic engine is what allows all these other platform companies and advertisers and other partners to exist, and be a part of this ecosystem. Ultimately what not being just a company  means to me, is just not being just that—building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.”

That really big change in the world is happening. Facebook helps us take our friends and interests with us wherever we go. It convinced us for the first time to use our real names and genuine identities on the Internet, and helped us build our digitized “social graph”—a representation of relationships with friends and things that interest us.

It succeeded so well at this that it can fairly be called a monopoly. Then it built a platform, a software infrastructure that lets Websites and companies take advantage of all that information to help users and customers create communities around any business or activity.

Now, as we are increasingly connected to the Internet everywhere we go using smartphones and other portable devices, those capabilities can come along.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "Mark Zuckerberg, Social Revolutionary" ]

by Roy H. Williams

The average person would rather be angry than bored. Anger is exciting.

Likewise, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of both is indifference.

I’m not suggesting that you be angry all the time. I’m suggesting only that you care enough to take action. No, that’s not it either. I’m suggesting that you take action even when you don’t care. Curiosity and action are the only cures for boredom.

“I’ve an idea. Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings and that we’re actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say?” – Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s 1956 play, Look Back in Anger

Boredom and indifference are deadly poisons. “Just go with the flow,” “Don’t make waves,” and “Whatever…” are the mantras of the walking dead.

I grow weary of people who speak endlessly about goal setting. It’s like listening to someone agonize over where to take their vacation. I feel like shouting, “Just pick a place and GO there! Choose! Go! There’s cool stuff to do EVERYWHERE.”

I like committed people. I avoid people who are not committed. They waste my time and frustrate me with sad stories and soft sighs as they sing the song of the weasel. You’ve heard the song. All its verses begin with the words “If only”:

“If only I had the money.”
“If only I had gone to college.”
“If only I had chosen differently.”

A committed person paints a picture of a possible future and then works to bring that picture to life. They see it before it happens. They believe it before it’s true. And they take action.

Weasels are dreamers. They see possibilities and sigh wistfully, “If only.”

Committed people are dreamers, too. But they see possibilities and take action. When that action doesn’t work they take another. And another. And another and another and another and…

Weasels believe success and failure to be permanent.

Committed people know both to be flickering moments, points on scoreboards that are constantly changing, tiny adventures called victories and defeats.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "How Not To Be Bored" ]

by Robert Peck

As an ex-Wall Street Institutional Investor ranked analyst, I’ve written on many stocks and IPOs before, including: LNKD IPO (here), BankRate IPO (here), and even a piece on Facebook back in 2007 where I argued Yahoo! needed to buy Facebook (here) for $6-7b.  

Importantly on Facebook, I think when one looks at the company’s potential, it’s paramount that one thinks bigger picture and longer term – this post is predicated on this.  

In the essence of being succinct, below I point out my Top 5 reasons I’m bullish on Facebook long term, as well as my Top 5 concerns.  There are an endless number of items for each list, but I think these items sum up the major points.

1 – Facebook is a Force Majeure @ 900m Users – Facebook dominates one of the largest forces on the Internet, Social.  It clearly embodies everything we do that’s social from posting pictures, to sharing our real time thoughts, to connecting with old friends, to making new friends.  

It reflects how we behave offline and exemplifies how social behaviors pervade much of what we do on a daily basis.  Facebook is the king of one of human’s most basic communication needs – sharing.  Further, the company has managed to expand outside its own website or app.

3 – Mobile Monetization is Just Starting – Facebook grew revenues ~45%  in the most recent quarter – that’s impressive.  However, what is most astounding, is that >50% of its monthly users visit the platform via a mobile device and these users haven’t been monetized yet.  Facebook is just starting to monetize >50% of its user base!  Imagine the lift in the financials from not only growing the users, but by merely monetizing over one-half of the current un-monetized base.

[ Details / Source: Above is our hand-picked KEY excerpt(s) from this full article: "The Facebook ($FB) IPO – the Enormous Upside Potential" ]

by Brad Wajnman

Let me start out by stating the obvious…

When you write a check to a charity, you’re making a donation — you’re giving away your money. Aside from getting a tax deduction, you’re not gonna see your money again.

When you buy a stock, you’re making an investment. Sure, there’s some risk involved, but you anticipate making a profit at some point.

But… what if you could direct a portion of your portfolio toward helping impoverished individuals AND earn a return on your investment in a socially beneficial and meaningful way?

It’s a novel idea to most investors; however the eBay-owned IV (Investment Vehicle) we just added to the AIP (Alternative Investments Page) is making it possible.

It allows individual investors (in the U.S.) with small amounts of capital to purchase low-risk securities offering conservative, but above CD and money-market, returns.

The money that’s raised from the sale of these securities is invested in microfinance institutions worldwide who give micro-loans to the working poor in developing countries and the U.S. in order to start their own small businesses.

These are people in poverty looking for a hand up rather than a hand out, so they can work their way towards economic security and stability.

With this IV, you can invest as little as $20 that goes towards providing the working poor with access to small loans, savings accounts, insurance and other products that many of us take for granted.

Investments can be screened by geographic region, the number of projects funded by the investment, and cause type such as ‘rural areas’, ‘women’, ‘fair trade’ and ‘green’.

It’s a great way to help break the cycle of poverty via long-lasting opportunities instead of short-term relief, as well as compound your good will and diversify your portfolio, all without cutting into your charitable donation budget.

Click here to read how others are doing it…

NOTE: The above is a preface of one of several key resources, vendors, or programs that Barry Goss and Brad Wajnman — respectively, the Wealth Vault Managing Editor and Investment Director — revealed to our paid-up members on Friday, May 11th. To get the full review of this particular investment vehicle, either login, or become a member…