Investors

Susan Fulton says about 100 clients of her Bethesda asset-management firm were "up for the risk" last month and invested a total of $1 million the day Facebook went public. "We bought it at the open, though we couldn't get confirmation on their trades," says Fulton, founder and president of FBB Capital Partners. "Nasdaq was shut down. " The stock exchange's technical problems aren't Fulton's only complaint. She's also upset over allegations that Facebook told underwriters before the initial public offering that revenues would be weaker than expected — and that this information was passed on to institutional investors but not to small investors like her clients.

Marylanders interested in owning thoroughbred horses can purchase shares in six racing investment companies founded by Frank Stronach, the owner of Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course . The stock offering began earlier this month, allowing investors in several states — including Maryland, California and New York — to own a piece of a thoroughbred for $10 a share. Each company plans to raise revenue by racing its horses until November 2013 and then by selling them. After the sale, the net proceeds would be distributed to shareholders, though the prospectus warns potential investors that owning racehorses involves a "high degree of risk.

- Thoroughbred racing is sometimes called the "sport of kings," but the horse owners and prospective owners sipping red wine at a reception the other night seemed too young to have ascended to an exalted level of royalty. Maybe they could symbolically be earls or viscounts. They looked like recent college graduates too old for the bar scene but too young to yet possess the graying, distinguished, moneyed look commonly associated with the sport's elite. But that was the point.

My first memories of The Baltimore Sun go back to 1982, when my wife and I were planning to move to Baltimore from Massachusetts. In the days before the Internet, home buyers turned to The Sun 's classified ads to get their arms around the range of housing alternatives. Thirty years ago was not only a time when The Sun 's real estate section was the go-to source for home listings, but it was also a time of low-teens mortgage rates and a housing crisis (albeit not quite as bad as our most recent crisis)

T. Rowe Price Group closed its high-yield bond funds to new investors as of Monday, the Baltimore money manager announced Tuesday. They include the investor class shares and advisor class shares of the $9.2 billion High Yield Fund as well as the $2.5 billion Institutional High Yield Fund. While Price will not accept new investors, existing shareholders can continue to invest in the funds. The funds were last closed in February 2004 and reopened three years ago. Investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into both funds in the last year.

Could crowdfunding work for entrepreneurs who need capital for their private startup and are willing to sell a stake in it to the masses? Congress seems to think so. Charities and artists successfully raise money for their causes via crowdfunding, a method of soliciting hundreds or thousands of small donations over the Internet. Could it work for entrepreneurs who need capital for their startup and are willing to sell a stake in it to the masses? Congress seems to think so. The bipartisan Jumpstart Our Business Startups — or JOBS — Act loosens restrictions so business can more easily raise capital and, it's hoped, create jobs.

StraighterLine, a Baltimore-based online college education startup, expects to announce Friday that it raised $10 million from venture capital firms to market and grow its business. The company's student enrollment this year was about 1,500 students, and it expects to enroll 4,500 students over the next year. StraighterLine employs 11 people and plans to grow to more than 20 employees over the next 12 months, said Burck Smith, the company's chief executive officer and founder. The company offers online college courses for credit through a $99-a-month subscription model, an approach the company says is a response to the escalating cost of college education.

Shirley M. Boyer, a well-known Anne Arundel County real estate investor and former bank director, died Thursday of cancer at her Severna Park home. She was 75. A daughter of farmers, the former Shirley Milhausen was born in Baltimore and raised on the family farm on Kinder Road in Millersville, which is now Severna Park. She was a 1954 graduate of Glen Burnie High School and a year earlier, had married her husband, Harold G. "Bud" Boyer, a master electrician. Mrs. Boyer was a real estate investor and owned many properties in Anne Arundel County.

Give anyone age 40 and older a time machine and they would likely go back to their early 20s — to open an IRA. That's because by 40, many of us have learned the miracle of compound earnings over time. We kick ourselves for not socking away even tiny sums in a tax-sheltered individual retirement account when we were younger. Consider the math: A 22-year-old who invests $100 a month in an IRA for 10 years and then stops will end up with more money at age 65 than a 32-year-old who saves $100 a month in an IRA for 33 years.