Want the Secrets to Succeed on Wall Street?

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the close on Friday over the perceived lack of performance in the Facebook IPO. The stock priced at $38, opened at $42.50 (after a few hiccups at the NASDORK), and closed at exactly $38 after an effort by the syndicate members akin to the Spartans at Thermopylae to keep it from dropping below the offering price. The retail rubes screamed bloody murder, with the NY Post running the headline pictured here claiming that Facebook soaked Main Street for $20 billion.

Where was the pop? Shouldn't Facebook have screamed up at least 50% on the open? Where was Johnny Lunchbucket's payoff for putting 2 and 2 together that Facebook is a popular social media site?

Josh Rosenbaum, co-author of one of the most widely read and respected books on Valuation -- Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, and Mergers and Acquisitions will be attending the WSO Conference as a speaker and sitting on several panels. See below for his full bio.

More BIG announcements on additional speakers coming in the next couple weeks, but get in now while there are still some discounted tickets left (see below).

Recently WFC has been on the rise as a premier investment bank. Many people on Wall Street consider it to be one of the best places to work because of its safety and conservatism. As a premier investment bank, can it go head to head with other BB's such as JPM and GS?

Some Background:
Two acquisitions have Wells Fargo in a great position to build its business. The firm acquired LaCross Global Fund Services from Cargill last year and Merlin securities just a month ago. LaCross is a hedge fund admin that provides outsourcing of administrative services to hedge fund clients and Merlin is a prime brokerage unit.

With Merlin's client base and Lacross' expertise, WFC is in a tactical position to build relationships with more hedge funds. The growth of WFC as an IB adds more competition to Wall Street. It should be interesting to see WFC climb up the ladder as others continue to cut the fat from their operations.

Too big to fail? This time we will see if a bank is too big to succeed.

The (Un)fortunate Truth of Technology

This is going to be sort of a fun, speculative, yet maybe scary reflection on a couple new developments within the tech space.

There was a short video posted on WSO already linking to a short video clip of Google’s new initiative: Project Glass. For those of you who are unfamiliar, check out the video below or the thread here (thanks to JeremyLinMVP).