The brand new stock in Facebook is down 11 percent right now to $33.11. If day one of trading was seen as a disappointment, day two is so far not winning many new friends at the social networking company.
Facebook's first investors didn't lose their shirts. The company's stock is trading right where it started on Friday: 38 bucks a share. But the initial public offering didn't go exactly as planned. The start was delayed; computer systems locked up; and NASDAQ executives are promising to fix the problems.
After opening later than expected, the first few hours of the Facebook IPO are suggesting that the company might have misjudged the value of its shares.
Facebook finally goes public today in the biggest IPO in Silicon Valley history. The market valuation will surpass $100 billion; that's more than well-established companies like Disney and Kraft.
California Gov. Jerry Brown recently informed Californians that the state was $16 billion in the hole, instead of the mere $9 billion everyone expected. The Facebook IPO will generate a lot of taxable income for a few thousand Californians.
As Facebook plans to go public next week, this week individual investors are buying E*Trade accounts because of the rumors they may be able to get in early on the public shares of Facebook stock. How easy is that?
