Stocks and Trading Thread - Channeling your inner Mono

[CountDeMoney]

Been trying to short FB, but apparently it's not allowed. So much for free markets eh...

Ha!  When are people going to learn The Little Guy doesn't get first dibs on IPOs.  Hell, don't even get 4th dibs.

You'll be allowed to have a crack at it when it's at $77.

[PJL]

Been trying to short FB, but apparently it's not allowed. So much for free markets eh...

Ha!  When are people going to learn The Little Guy doesn't get first dibs on IPOs.  Hell, don't even get 4th dibs.

You'll be allowed to have a crack at it when it's at $77.

Well, that's fine by me, because it sure isn't worth $40, let alone $77.

[Admiral Yi]

Been trying to short FB, but apparently it's not allowed. So much for free markets eh...

Please elaborate.

[PJL]

Been trying to short FB, but apparently it's not allowed. So much for free markets eh...

Please elaborate.

I'm using Tradefair, the spead betting site and have actually phoned the dealing people there, and was told that the market aren't allowing any shorts on Facebook.

[Grey Fox]

I knew a guy at Ubisoft who bought 5000 Apple shares at 5$.

I hate that guy.

[MadImmortalMan]

Coming back. Hopefully not enough to drag the market back with it. Apple can do that, but I don't think FB has enough shares out there for it.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm using Tradefair, the spead betting site and have actually phoned the dealing people there, and was told that the market aren't allowing any shorts on Facebook.

So a betting site is saying they can't take the bet because the market is not allowed to short Facebook?

You're a Swedonite, right?  I wonder if this has anything to do with the Greece inspired "no naked short" rule in Europe.

[PJL]

I'm using Tradefair, the spead betting site and have actually phoned the dealing people there, and was told that the market aren't allowing any shorts on Facebook.

So a betting site is saying they can't take the bet because the market is not allowed to short Facebook?

You're a Swedonite, right?  I wonder if this has anything to do with the Greece inspired "no naked short" rule in Europe.

No, I'm in the UK, so it's either London or New York that is stopping shorts being allowed on Facebook right now. And even in Europe, naked shorts were only banned against bank shares.

[alfred russel]

I think Facebook may not be shortable because it isn't marginable yet (too soon after IPO). Until it is marginable you can't buy it on margin or short it.

[Habsburg]

So four hours after opening FB trades at $38.10!!!!!!! 

[ulmont]

So four hours after opening FB trades at $38.10!!!!!!! 

Henry Blodget made the point earlier today that companies aren't going to go public anymore until they're ready to trade sideways. We shouldn't expect to see a huge pop. But Facebook is a really rare investment. Is it perhaps the biggest internet property in the world? Yes. Is it a big risk? Yes.

If you want a stable mature tech company at a reasonable valuation, you should buy Apple or Google. If you want a brand new start up, you should chase some flavor of the month, a lot of which are on the secondary market. If want something that's going to have explosive growth, you should have invested in Facebook a long time ago. [Note: For the moment, Robak is prescient. He made this comment before Facebook's IPO was flat.]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/if-facebooks-profit-model-stays-the-same-this-valuation-doesnt-make-any-sense/257396/#

[alfred russel]

My grandparents rallied around the flag during the crisis of WWII and bought Liberty Bonds to keep our government financed.

In this time of financial crisis, I am now selling short the American government.

[citizen k]

FaceBook: The Complete Forensic Post-Mortem

While much has already been written on the topic of peak valuation, social bubbles popping, and the ethical social utility of yesterday's historically overhyped IPO, nobody has done an analysis of the actual stock trading dynamics as in-depth as the following complete forensic post-mortem by Nanex. Because more than anything, those tense 30 minutes between the scheduled open and the actual one (which just happened to coincide with the European close), showed just how reliant any form of public capital raising is on technology and electronic trading. And to think there was a time when an IPO simply allowed a company to raise cash: sadly it has devolved to the point where a public offering is a policy statement in support of a broken capital market, which however is fully in the hands of SkyNet, as yesterday's chain of events, so very humiliating for the Nasdaq, showed. From a delayed opening, to 2 hour trade confirmation delays, virtually everyone was in the dark about what was really happening behind the scenes! As the analysis below shows, what happened was at times sheer chaos, where everything was hanging by a thread, because if FB had gotten the BATS treatment, it was lights out for the stock market. Well, the D-Day was avoided for now, but at what cost? And how much over the greenshoe FaceBook stock overallotment did MS have to buy to prevent it from tumbling below $30 because as Reuters reminds us, "had Morgan Stanley bought all of the shares traded around $38 in the final 20 minutes of the day, it would have spent nearly $2 billion." What about the first defense of $38?  In other words: in order to make some $67 million for its Investment Banking unit, was MS forced to eat a several hundred million loss in its sales and trading division just to avoid looking like the world's worst underwriter ever? We won't know for a while, but in the meantime, here is a visual summary of the key events during yesterday's far less than historic IPO.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/facebook-complete-forensic-post-mortem

[citizen k]

Ha!  When are people going to learn The Little Guy doesn't get first dibs on IPOs.  Hell, don't even get 4th dibs.

You'll be allowed to have a crack at it when it's at $77.

Indeed. Here's a comment from zerohedge that mirrors your sentiment. andrewp111 writes,

The REAL IPO of FB took place more than a year ago. Hundreds of insiders and thousands of "qualified investors"  already got their shares. The public IPO was just so they could unload their shares onto the suckers. Anyone who was paying attention knew this would happen.

[Admiral Yi]

Plenty of shares available at the IPO price now.