Hispanics And Facebook Stock
By Graace Flores-Hughes, Voxxi
But the stock price didn’t take off nor reach the level company officials and investors hoped for. Instead, by market close it had reached just 28 cents above its initial offering of $38 per share.
Interestingly, Hispanics — not just in America but in other Latin American countries — are some of the largest users ofFacebook. However, our role in its share-buying is another matter.
This stock offering may have affected some, but in Hispanic communities throughout America it came and went without a whimper.
Maybe the Carlos Slims of the world were all eyes and ears to the Wall Street phenomena of May 17. For the rest of usLatinos in America it was an event that might as well not have happened. You see, we Hispanics, by and large, are not big stock market investors.
Part of this reason is that over 65 percent of Hispanics interviewed in the early part of 2000 said they were not willing to take risks with their investments, compared to only 36 percent of whites who held that view, according to a study conducted by Sherman Hanna, an Ohio State University professor, and Suzanne Lindamood, an Ohio attorney.
During the 2002 stock market decline minorities left the stock market at a much higher rate than whites. Hanna suggested that, “It may be that white investors are more experienced with the stock market, so that they are prepared for the inevitable drops. Minorities tend to be new investors and may be scared off more easily.”
This may be the case, but regardless, Hispanics overall don’t play in the stock market.
Our buying power, which is well in the trillions, is one thing but our influence on how the stock market moves in this country is slim to none and slim left town.
We tend to place our money in homeownership and some researchers say that is due to our concept that homeownership is for us the ultimate American dream. However, since the real estate collapse in 2005, a PEW study found that Latinos accounted for the largest single decline in wealth of all racial and ethnic groups.
Many of the homes bought by Hispanics were in states such as Florida, Nevada and Arizona — the very areas where real estate went bonkers.
In that same PEW study, it was found that two thirds of Hispanic’s medium net worth comes from home equity, so it’s natural that when the housing market collapsed so did wealth in these communities.
Since whites’ wealth comes mainly from the stock market and corporate savings, their wealth made a rebound when the market did. We should learn from this and get in the stock market game.
Hispanics make up almost 20 percent of the American population and one can only imagine how our wealth would change and how the stock market would be affected if more of us invested in the market. It’s never too late.
This article first appeared in Voxxi.
[Photo by Facebook]