#loyal3

Square Merchants Bought Shares During Its I.P.O., With a Start-Up’s Help

Square invited its merchants to buy shares in the company’s November initial public offering through a platform known as Loyal3.

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I’ve blogged about Loyal3′s innovative IPO-for-everyone product several times.

Today they rolled out the ability to see the performance of your investments. Unfortunately their marketing people don’t have the financial chops as their software engineers, as the photoshop mock-up got the math wrong.

In the email we see the Amount Invested is $500 & the current value as $1000 giving a return of 200%.

This just arrived in my email - enjoy

Our mission is to level the playing field and provide you with equal access to investment opportunities previously only available to institutional investors and a few selected individuals. 

We began with IPOs, and today we are announcing Follow-On Offerings, fee-free and only available to the public on LOYAL3.

What's a Follow-On Offering?

A follow-on offering is when a public company, already listed on an exchange, sells additional shares to investors. The general public has typically not had access to these offerings, but LOYAL3 is changing that. Learn More 

How Does Follow-On Offering Pricing Work?

Follow-on shares are frequently, but not always, offered at a modest discount from the closing market price on the day the stock is issued. By the time follow-on shares are priced and allocated, market activity may have affected the public stock price-meaning you may receive shares at a price lower, higher, or equal to the public stock. Learn More 

What is the difference between an IPO and Follow-On Offering?

An IPO is a company's first offering of shares to the public and a follow-on is when a public company offers new shares after its IPO. Another difference is the length of the follow-on roadshow, which is usually much shorter, typically 1-5 days, whereas an IPO roadshow can last 2 weeks. 

How will Follow-Ons work at LOYAL3?

Similar to IPOs, you will select the maximum amount you would like to invest and wait for pricing and the two-hour decision window. As always, there are no fees, and you can invest as little as $100. You can cancel any time before the end of the two-hour window, which begins once final pricing is announced. Learn More 

My first question when I decided to start investing, was "How?" It's not like you can just go to the store and buy stock in whatever company. How do you buy and sell stocks? The answer is through a broker, be it a real person, or online brokerage like Scottrade or e*trade. However, these services charge per-trade fees of $7-$10, which is just untenable for someone who's only got $50-$100 to invest at a time. That's how I discovered Loyal3. They promise "fee-free" investing, which is exactly what I wanted.

It's important to note that the reason Loyal3 is able to offer this service is because they don't operate like a traditional brokerage. Instead of buying and selling on an exchange, they partner with select companies to offer Direct Stock Purchase Plans to the public. This means that you can only invest in a somewhat small list of companies at the moment, and it can take several business days to actually execute a buy order (for example, I submitted an order at open of business Friday that was executed on Wednesday; 4 business days).

April (or Conference-palooza) is coming to an end, but it’s been a great ride (most of the time). Earlier we posted about the inaugural NY Tech Day, but we also wanted to highlight the AdAge Digital Conference that also took place last week here in NY.

In stark contrast to the technology meetups that dominate our schedule these days, Ad Age Digital attracted mostly senior level marketers from Fortune 500 brands, agencies, and established media publishers. So while the presentation’s may not have been as bleeding edge, the conversations over the buffet were incredibly valuable.  Companies also used the conference to make product announcements, including Tumblr announcing their first foray into paid advertising and Spotify & Coca-Cola forging a strategic partnership. 

(image from loyal3.com)

In the very near future, you'll be able to buy stock in a company you like by clicking three times within a Facebook app. Yes.

The start-up behind this investing revolution is Loyal3, and its goal is to make a boatload of money. But its other goal is to make it easy (and free) for average people to buy stock in the companies they like. And its other other goal is for companies to make it easy (and free) for average people to buy stock in their company, and thereby earn more loyal customers. Er, investomers.

Amazing, right? The Internet and mobile technology have already revolutionized philanthropy - now anyone can donate $10 instantly with just a text message - so it was only a matter of time before the financial industry got in on the action. (Ahem.)

But this guy is a little concerned about making "mindless" investing available to the next generation. Why encourage people to buy stock without first giving them the proper tools for learning about the health of the company? Loyal3 could be a great opportunity for young investors who want to try out their growing knowledge about investing. But it could also be the next bad idea - we've seen the damage that can be caused by blindly handing money over to people who make promises without showing us what's behind the curtain.