I’m still basking in the glory of what happened in our home state yesterday and reading as much info as I can about the upcoming marriage law. I also saw the Twitter IPO news and have some thoughts on that as well.
Marriage Equality’s impact on Illinois
While on Towleroad, I came across a cool infographic on how marriage equality will affect Illinois. Some interesting stats:
- 11,525 couples are expected to marry in the first three years of the law being enacted
- There will be an estimated $103 Million increase in total spending
- The state could receive an $8.5 Million increase in tax revenues
While these numbers provide a great economic rationale for same-sex marriage, equality is its own reward.
Marriage Bus Trips
Also saw this on Towleroad (great stuff today guys!): organized trips for marriage equality. I’ve talked about this approach as a viable option. Now that Illinois has its act together, I think I can wait. I’m just glad the option exists for others who don’t have the good fortune of living in a marriage equality state…..not yet anyway.
Big news that Twitter set its IPO price. One of my coworkers asked me what I thought about the prospects of the new public offering.
My response: IPOs are for suckers.
For those that don’t know, an initial public offering (IPO) is the first sale of a company’s stock to the public. Among other reasons, a company “goes public” to raise cash and become a publicly traded entity. (It can also make the original investors in the company very, very rich.) Once the initial offering happens, shares trade freely on the open market. The added liquidity does come with regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
While I love, love, love Twitter, studies have shown that IPOs perform poorly in the long run. Not only that, but buying one stock offers no diversity, cost savings, or tax protection. Thus, buying into an IPO (Twitter or otherwise) doesn’t fit within my investing strategy.
Besides those points, as a small investor, your chances of getting in on the ground floor of an IPO are pretty slim. But even if you could, you probably don’t want to.