The long awaited Facebook IPO is now underway and open trading of the Facebook stock with symbol FB on the NASDAQ is underway. For many who got in early with pre-sales of the historical IPO, including a large number of average investors using their e*Trade account, the results so far have been a little flat.
The final IPO price for the Facebook stock settled at $38 per share. After some delay in opening trading this morning while the pre-sale orders were filled, the Facebook (FB) stock opened in open trading at around $42 per share.
Within the first 30 minutes after opening to all stock trades online, the stock had dropped to as low as the original $38 IPO price. Not long after, however, Facebook stock started a slow climb back up to the low $40 range again.
Many experts indicate that the relatively slow start may be attributed to the volume of trading and the ‘settling’ of accounts for the initial IPO buyers. Experts caution not to read too much into the initial results as this was one of the most hyped IPOs in history, and the company still holds massive value and earnings potential.
On a related note, trading for shares of Zynga (ZNGA) stock were halted minutes after the Facebook stock began trading. On the lower than expected results from the FB stock, shares of ZNGA stock dropped by about 13%. To prevent an out of control spiral for Zynga, which recently had their own IPO, the trading on the stock was suspended. Zynga, an online gaming company who’s games are played on Facebook in large part, is responsible for a substantial amount of revenue for Facebook.