The Facebook IPO

While trading glitches at the Nasdaq on the company’s opening day are widely seen as contributing to the sell-off, the stock’s lingering shortcomings are raising questions about whether or not lead underwriter Morgan Stanley (along with other banks) misgauged the demand, and the price of the deal.

While Mark Zuckerberg’s daily wealth gyrations may be new, the phenomena of sudden wealth loss is not.  It is now part of the world of wealth, where a growing number of personal fortunes are made and lost in the volatile stock market.

“For big company IPOs, what happens in the first two days doesn’t predict what happens over the next six months,” says one expert on stock offerings.

In the latest chapter of Facebook's trading saga, regulators will be stepping in to oversee a process that will attempt to reconcile Friday’s botched trades.

“Ironically, this is a huge plus for the IPO market ... with below-average pricings moving forward,” one IPO analyst said.

Still waiting for your buy and sell orders on Facebook spacer to clear? That's ok, it's only money. A lot of money. Your money. In honor of the most astounding trading event of the year, Josh Brown renamed the Facebook IPO "Face-plant", which I thought was pretty funny.

"All the buy-side institutions are shorting it," says one pro. "So there's no reason to jump in here. You're catching a falling knife."

The stock sank without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down nearly 25 percent from where they were Friday.

The Facebook fiasco: One party conspicuously quiet in all this is NYSE Euronext. What you have heard from it, officially, is: Zip. Zero. Nada.

Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld will be on high alert Monday morning when newly public company Facebook gets set to trade after Friday's debacle. He tells Maria Bartiromo what went wrong.

The price action in Facebook may be a bit of a letdown, but check out the volume. It's record-setting.

The Securities and Exchange Commission indicated after the market close Friday that it would review trading issues on the Nasdaq related to Facebook’s initial public offering.

Facebook set a record for volume on its first day of trading, but the stock otherwise failed to live up to all the hype.

For those of you a little rattled by the first day of trading Facebook stock — there's a drink for that.