I spent three years at one of the world's largest hedge funds. I was a banker for a year before that. Most important lesson I learned: Don't play individual stocks and think you have anything more than a gambler's chance of success.<p>There's a public perception that stocks as an asset are simple to understand - good company=stock goes up! - that is hugely far from the truth. Equity is a complex instrument. The factors influencing the movement of equities are complex.<p>For the retail investor, the best move is a balanced mixed of assets designed to capture long term market beta - effectively the tendency of asset classes to gain value over time. That's not so easy either, but if you gamble, it's better to gamble on a cornerstone of capitalism as a whole rather than an individual company.
This article is dead on!<p>The warning signs were there; ballooning shares offered, late uptick in IPO price, companies saying facebook advertising sucks, etc.<p>People got suckered and are crying foul. Welcome to the stock market. Suck it up, learn from your failures.
"Investing" is stock market is a gamble: the easiest way to learn that it is casino is by experience (invest and learn).<p>The problem is that the new generation will not listen suggestions of people which already learn things the hard-way - so there will be always fresh influx of suckers which think these 'old' people don't get it.<p>However, this does not mean that investment in stock market is a bad idea - but you need to consider it as 'poker': money management is very very important, learn to cut loses fast, you need to hedge (especially for unforeseeable events while market is closed), don't bet blind, etc.
All Facebook has to do is tie the advertising platform to having a business page on Facebook to force businesses to spend something on ads. Individuals should be able to use Facebook free but not businesses. Once that happens the stock will go way up.
I am all for justice but this type of behaviour happens all the time. It has just made the front page news because of retail investors discovering shares go down (as well as up). I know this message will get down voted but the financial markets are a fickle place. Sorry.
I work for a financial-services company and I <i>still</i> think investing in the stock market is crazy. There are people who spend their days figuring out how to separate "investors" (basically, gamblers) from their money either without getting caught or in a legal-but-underhanded manner. I know I'm stupid enough to have my money taken from me without understanding how, but I'm not stupid enough to actually subject myself to that.
Somewhat revisionist it seems from the WSJ, I can't recall any point in the lead up to IPO that they published anything that alluded to problems on the near horizon.