[Kilgore Trout had written a novel call the Big Board.] It was about an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials. They were put on display in a zoo on a planet called Zircon-212.<p>These fictitious people in the zoo had a big board supposedly showing stock market quotations and comodity prices along one wall of their habitat, and a news ticker, and a telephone that was supposedly connected to a brokerage on Earth. The creatures on Zircon-212 told their captives that they had invested a million dollars for them back on Earth, and that it was up to the captives to manage it so that they would be fabulously wealthy when they were returned to Earth.<p>The telephone and the big board and the ticker were all fakes, of course. They were simply stimulants to make the Earthlings perform vividly for the crowds at the zoo--to make them jump up and down and cheer, or gloat, or sulk, or tear their hair, to be scared shitless or to feel as contented as babies in their mothers' arms.<p>The Earthlings did very well on paper. That was part of the rigging, of course. And religion got mixed up in it, too. The news ticker reminded them that the President of the United States had declared National Prayer Week, and that everybody should pray. The Earthlings had had a bad week on the market before that. They had lost a small fortune in olive oil futures. So they gave praying a whirl.<p>It worked. Olive oil went up.<p>-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
This is Hacker News. The top-voted comment on this thread really should be words of praise for what Zuckerberg and his team have accomplished.<p>Every hacker, every entrepreneur, every creator should derive inspiration and uplift from Facebook's story. It's a rare bright day in the middle of the worst economic environment since the 1930s. It doesn't matter whether the company will grow into a $100B valuation. It does matter that it was started in February 2004, by a single guy with a computer, and has affected the lives of billions of people and created billions of dollars in wealth.<p>Maybe the markets won't be kind to them. Maybe they won't grow into the $100B valuation. But outside of those who are direct competitors, I can't understand anyone who actually wishes them ill. As a creator, as an entrepreneur, as a hacker, if you tear down Facebook you're just tearing down yourself.
The opening ceremony was actually kind of cool:<p><a href="http://www.livestream.com/nasdaq/video?clipId=pla_80cca9bb-4637-4286-b343-42552074576b&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb" rel="nofollow">http://www.livestream.com/nasdaq/video?clipId=pla_80cca9bb-4...</a><p>Seeing the sheer joy on Mark Zuckerberg's face was nice. I thought he was going to shed a tear, actually.<p>It's always inspiring to see a geek get his day.
This is like a NASCAR race, many (most?) of us watching secretly hope for a spectacular crash. It's wrong, but the potential of schadenfreude is very tempting.
Seems like Morgan Stanley and friends priced/played it perfectly for their client. Isn't that their role...to get the highest IPO price for the company they represent? It seems like the companies get screwed when there is big post IPO pop. It's a way for the banks to reward their customers at the expense of the company.
<p><pre><code> $> ping us.etrade.com
PING us.etrade.com (12.153.224.21): 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
36 bytes from etrade-fina.edge4.atlanta2.level3.net (4.30.52.206): Communication prohibited by filter
Vr HL TOS Len ID Flg off TTL Pro cks Src Dst
4 5 00 5400 115d 0 0000 31 01 9939 10.0.232.100 12.153.224.21
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
^C
--- us.etrade.com ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
</code></pre>
Now that's demand.<p>(etrade is an online brokerage service for independent traders, and their network is <i>very</i> unhappy right now.)
Please note that FB doesn't begin trading until 11AM EST[1].<p>[1] <a href="http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/article.aspx?post=f931548b-9920-46d4-ae36-3d1256759102" rel="nofollow">http://money.msn.com/technology-investment/article.aspx?post...</a>
It's weird how I posted the exact same thing with a slightly different URL two hours ago and it went unnoticed: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991295" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3991295</a><p>edit: Not complaining. It seemed like an interesting accidental split test.
If you look at the bottom right under "Key stats and ratios"[1] you can see a trace of Google creating a time with 0 (default I guess) and spitting out the year (+/- 1 because of timezones) of the Unix epoch.<p>[1] <a href="http://d.pr/i/sMYb" rel="nofollow">http://d.pr/i/sMYb</a>
This whole thing reminded me that there was a Facebook employee in my "class" for an internship I had in 2004. Little did I know...<p><a href="http://cl.ly/0g3r3Q3W0K360g2y0g06" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/0g3r3Q3W0K360g2y0g06</a><p>A valuation of a whole $4 million!
The reason for FB's drop seems simple. The options have been traded on secondmarket for a long time already, meaning institutional investors have already been playing the invest-in-facebook game for a long time.<p>The only folks left are the normal folks and I don't believe they have the money to drive the price up significantly.<p>In short: this is a liquidity event for Facebook ownership and nothing else.
Someone mentioned on CNBC that he had placed an order (and seem to have gotten) 100 shares of FB via e-trade. Can retail investors (aka ... unsophisticated Joes like me) get in on the IPO allocation? I thought the initial shares were only offered to large investors (> 100K purchases). This doesn't help me for FB, but would be useful info in the future.
The Nasdaq will be FLOODED with orders when FB begins trading. Will be interesting to see how their systems handle every algorithmic trading machine on the planet trading FB's stock...
Amazing.. Are there other examples of where on IPO, especially as hyped as this, companies went flat, less than 0.1% change.<p>NOTE: IPO had 480 million or so stocks, and the net Volume was 486 million.
The share price is dropping. So far very exciting 20 minutes. The stock price is fluctuating up and down.<p>It went to $40 its now back to where it started. Things volatile at this moment.
Facebook is (apparently) worth 80 Billion and it employs 3539 people and I somehow doubt that they are employing many contractors either.<p>Is this possibly a scary thought for the future in terms of job creation? If you can be on track to becoming the biggest communications (and advertising) provider on the planet whilst employing close to nobody, what happens if other industries end up following this model?
Enjoy the live broadcast and streaming by WSJ: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/05/18/live-blog-facebooks-trading-debut/?mod=yahoo_hs" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/05/18/live-blog-faceboo...</a><p>Occasionally shows streams from the NASDAQ opening with Mark Zuckerberg and the crowd.
There is a fair bit of talk about what this will do for the angel community in SV -- Using Google as a bit of pre-history and what happened there.<p>Anybody got any insights into the different cohorts? Generalising like hell - But, I'm assuming Facebook angels will be quite different flavour to Google ones?
So... that percentage next to the stock price represents the change in value since it opened? Mine currently says +0.99 (2.61%) but the stock opened at $42 and the current price is $39. I would think the number should be a negative value/percentage.
Lots of people talking about using etrade.com to get in on this... is there an equivalent for those of us in Canada?<p>i.e. Super fast and easy to setup account where I can immediately buy some shares?
Is there any way to know who owned the shares in Fb (and how much) as of yesterday evening (pre-IPO)?<p>I don't know if such an info is made public. If it is, anyone has a link?
Although I'm generally a market bear and have been saying we're in a bubble for months, even I'm having a hard time seeing how there isn't going to be an almighty pop today given the sheer amount of irrational exuberance over this.<p>My bet is FB closes somewhere between $55 and $65. Anyone else fancy making a prediction?<p>[ edit: stuck an upper limit on my prediction to make it more interesting :) ]
FB would have fallen more, but the underwriters of the IPO stepped in at $38 to support that level. This stock is bound to fall after today. I'm predicting $25 by the first earnings call.
ok, so this started happening last night for me and some friends I pinged: I clicked on a picture (multiple of them!) and each time I see this shit: <a href="http://postimage.org/image/rvdiya58z/full/" rel="nofollow">http://postimage.org/image/rvdiya58z/full/</a><p>I say Facebook IS in a lot of financial troubles!!