Facebook Dot Con Redux

You seriously expected to make money on the Facebook IPO?  Sucker!  Why any regular investor would be believe yet another IPO hype machine after the dot con era is beyond me, but suckered in they were.  Now the lawsuits are flying and we have yet another SEC non-action action that they would look into this.  Just the other day, the SEC let Lehman Brothers completely off the hook. The general lawsuit is described below:

Of course nothing will happen to stop the insider information, the hyping the hell out of a company and the great insider profit, retail investor sucker game of IPOs.

As if this wasn't bad enough, it seems NASDAQ's computer and trading systems completely screwed up the trades and of course we have the obligatory announcement the SEC will look into this as well. Few mention NASDAQ OMX plain screwed the pooch with poor algorithm and software design, computing up a brew of sheer incompetence in this mess. We don't know if NASDAQ OMX labor arbitrage their engineers, but we do know most banks signed multiple dollar offshore outsourcing contracts, even in the middle of the financial crisis as our government gave trillions in bail out funds.

The turmoil caused the four big market-makers for Facebook's stock, Knight Capital Group, Citigroup's Automated Trading Desk, Citadel Securities, and UBS AG to lose around $115 million between them.

Below is Bloomberg Law's interview asking Will Facebook's IPO Fiasco Force Regulatory Reforms? Contained within the below video clip is a quote that only a pundit can argue with.

If precedent is a guide, the SEC will act on this by 2018.

 

 

The above interview refers to Reg FD. Reg FD stands for Regulation Fair Disclosure and was enacted by the SEC in August 2000. The dot con crash started in earnest at the end of March 2000. No longer was it allowed to selectively disclose information to some investors and not to others critical information, such as how many publicly traded companies were hyped up, manufacturing vaporware with empty fictional business models only insiders were aware of.

All over the Internets, Facebook is being defriended. Considering the business of Facebook is to profile your every move network people and electronically create communities, being given the thumbs down is none too good news for egg on your face book's long term business strategy. It is just astounding to this day people buy into the hype of Wall Street. Many warned, including this site in Déjà vu Dot Con. That said, considering the lies that pass as policy these days in political land, maybe the mass hysteria and hypnosis of the masses into thinking a like button is worth $100 billion makes sense.

Don't you people get it? An IPO is not for you, little guy, it's for Wall Street, the various venture capitalists, early investors, underwriters and the rest of the gang to make huge profits. Will Facebook & Wall Street Co. get away with presenting $100 billion dollar evaluations over a like button? Probably but then has the little guy seen any justice in the last 20 years?  We cannot even get a few token trials prosecuting the financial crisis these days.  Hell no there is no justice, never mind riches for the masses.

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Comments

another good comment on IPOs generally

It seems some are angry at the lack of a "Pop" in price after the IPO. Angry Bear does some digging on successful IPOs recently. This post is talking about something different, but we tend to agree, anyone just assuming at the IPO the stock price will continue to rise from here, well, that just is not realistic.

Although an additional comment would be institutional investors might be also dumping their stock to take profits almost immediately.

Anyway, if the rage is because FB's stock didn't soar in price, hey, yet another not in reality assumption.