Update: Facebook boomerangs in day one
After zooming up 13 percent in the first minute of trading on Friday, May 18, by 4 p.m. shares of Facebook Inc. had fallen back to slightly above the $38 price the company had set as its initial public offering.
It marked an up-and-down performance for Facebook’s (Nasdaq: FB) first day as a public company, with the company’s market cap at $105 billion.
According to Dow Jones, Facebook set an IPO record with 460 million shares traded in the first day. A 30-minute delay left investors champing at the bit, with the first trade occurring just past 11:30 a.m. Two hours before, CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq”™s opening bell remotely from Facebook”™s grounds in Menlo Park, Calif. surrounded by hundreds of employees.
The Nasdaq finished 1.2 percent lower on Friday, with the Dow Jones off 0.6 percent.
Greenwich native Tyler Winklevoss, who with twin brother Cameron accepted a settlement in a high-profile lawsuit disputing Zuckerberg’s rights to the Facebook model, “retweeted” Facebook IPO accounts Friday morning on his Twitter account but as of the market close neither brother had commented directly on the IPO.
[Editor’s note: Updated from a version that was published earlier Friday morning, and corrected to reflect the correct stock ticker symbol for Facebook.]