Facebook isn’t getting the boost it had hoped for in the first morning of trading.
In the most anticipated technology initial public offering since Google, Facebook’s stock on Friday erased a quick start with steady declines in its first few hours of trading.
Facebook’s stock, which goes by the ticker “FB,” jumped to $43, up $5, in the first half-hour after the market opened, with 82 million shares reportedly traded in the first 30 second. But the hype slowly trickled away, and so did large numbers of investors, who began to unfriend the world’s most popular social network.
By 11:49 a.m., Facebook was back down to the opening price of $38. The stock then began a slight uptick, trading steady around the $38 to just-below-$40 mark. It hit $39.52 at noon, but far below the levels some investors may have hoped for.
Count Bono among the disappointed investors.
The music icon and lead singer of rock band U2 owns 2.3 percent of Facebook, which would be worth about $1.5 billion, if the stock lives up to the hype. It has been reported that would make him the richest musician in the world.
But Bono already seems skeptical about the stock’s success.