what a country.
Posted on 05/18/2012 5:32:02 PM PDT by BenLurkin
.Facebook Inc. FB +0.61%took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss.
The stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook's underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.
...
Facebook's underwriters had to step in to support the company's share price, people familiar with the matter said. In particular, lead underwriter Morgan Stanley MS -0.82%was assigned to be the deal's "stabilization agent"—meaning it was the firm's job to keep the shares above the offering price, these people said. In that role, Morgan Stanley was forced to buy Facebook shares as the price slid toward $38 in order to prevent the price from crossing into negative territory, according to these people.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Morgan Stanley, which led the platoon of 11 Wall Street banks that arranged the listing, had to dip into an emergency reserve of around 63 million Facebook shares—worth more than $2.3 billion at the offer price—to boost the price and create a floor around $38 a share, according to people close to the situation. In successful IPOs, the reserve, known as the "overallotment" or "green shoe," is used by underwriters to meet soaring demand but in this case, it was used to prop up Facebook's ailing share price.
of course it sputtered - they raised nearly all the money in the world. what’s left to make it go up?
what a country.
Isn't that price manipulation?
Is that legal?
It's the vanity stock and the way it makes people feel like they are "somebody" should have made the stock skyrocket in this age of "I'm the center of the universe and liberalism tells me so by giving me other peoples money willy nilly to make me feel good" society.
I got kicked off facebook for calling Canada’s Miss Univers candidate an it.
Remember that Facebook produces nothing - it is an electronic meeting place only. True it does generate advertising revenue;u, what new intellectual or physical property does it produce?
In the short term it is much noise over nothing. In the long run it could be another “Dot.Com” flash in the pan. Remember the Internet start up companies for the 1990’s whose wealth was based on internally generated hype?
Marketing data that's worth a whole helluva lot.
I have a strong feeling that FB will become an arm of the demonrat party.
Who wants to get Zuckered in to funding their insider billionaires een more? With all that media hoopla this overrated IPO had blinking yellow lights all over it for the chumps as investors.
Will become? You should have heard the schmucks on MSNBC this morning. Before FB started trading, they were like; Oh this is wealth creation, we need more of this. The Maserati and fine wine producers are going to benefit from this. Then after it fizzled, they sounded the funeral dirge. Classic.
How do they figure it’s worth $38 per share as an IPO, anyway. That seemed way too high to me. I’m not too surprised it didn’t go anywhere.
It is when the "right people" benefit from it.
The way the IPO game works is that "favored customers" of the brokerage houses get in on the ground floor of the IPO. The stock goes up, the early investors cash out and take their capital gains, and then the regular peon investors can participate.
Favored investors are NEVER supposed to LOSE money on an IPO.
Pets.com II.
An entire business based on 12 year old girls posting BS about their lives and playing games.
How long till the stock is at $10.
Law trumps business these days. PE 130, EPS. $0.30. Zuckerburg is unscruppled. Greed is a bad mistress. If it seems to good to be true, it is.
So the world turns from NY to Hong Kong to Dubai to London to NY again and again. Saturday, Sunday and the we have Monday morning markets roll in wondering if Facebook Franchise is really worth $100,000,000,000.00 plus or minus a few $Billion.
The test ride is on. Fasten your seatbelt.
It’s probably not a good sign if a “stabilizing” agent needs to step in to keep the price from falling.
I would assume that means that the “right” people haven’t sold yet. It’ll be below 30 by the end of the week.
FacePlant
Dead Cowboy Face plant. Sweet. My prognosis is a protracted decline . The regression of stock values to zero is infinite. Reverse splits are fascinating deceptions. Very legal.
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