Financial Biz Buzz

For some reason I was fascinated by the financial buzz yesterday over Rubert Murdoch's proposal to buy Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal for $5 Billion. Moments after his interview with Neil Cavuto on Your World the Bankroft family, which owns DJ/WSJ, rejected his bid outright. The way I see it, a lot of people made a lot of money on the speculation of what could be, given that the DJ stock price went from $32 to $54 on the news. If Murdoch bought Dow Jones, he could have sold off the financial management side of the company and recooped a large part of the purchase price and integrated the Journal with his upcoming Fox Biz Channel. Although his bid was rejected, News Corp received a tremendous amount of free publicity for its new cable network and made a statement that its serious about being a player in the financial market.

I've had an interest in financial happenings for a long time. As a history nut, I was always impressed with the tycoon's of yesteryear, such as William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, as well as modern moguls like Jack Welch, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Murdoch himself. I thoroughly enjoyed economics courses I took in college, but really took more interest once I played the stock market online for a year. The first day I sat down with $300 to buy shares, I bought Books a Million (BAMM). They were set to release earnings reports that day and speculation was that it would be better than expected. Sure enough I sat down that morning and watched the stock steadily climb from $4 a share until it peaked out at $47 a share before noon. I got out just before it peaked somewhere around $38. I had made $2,500 in about an hour and a half. That will spoil you, as it doesn't happen often. I haven't played the market since that year, but I definately enjoyed learning more about it. News like this just makes me want to get back into it even more.