Facebook sinks

Facebook shares sank on Monday in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down 25 percent from where they were Friday afternoon.
Facebook's debut was beset by problems, so much so that Nasdaq said on Monday it was changing its IPO procedures. That may comfort companies considering a listing but does little for Facebook, whose lead underwriter Morgan Stanley had to step in and defend the $38 offering price on the open market.
Without that same level of defence, its shares fell $4.50 to $33.73 in the first 1-1/2 hours of trading. That represented a decline of 11.8 percent from Friday's close and 25 percent from the intra-day high of $45 a share.
"At the moment it's not living up to the hype," Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago said, adding that some people may have decided to hang back and buy the stock on the declines.
"Look at the valuation on it. It might have said 'buy' to a few people, but boy it was awfully rich," he said.
The losses wiped some $19 billion off of the company's market capitalisation -- not far from what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was worth personally when the stock debuted.
Volume was again massive, with more than 96 million shares trading hands by 11 am EDT (15OO GMT), making it by far the most active stock on the US market. Nearly 581 million shares were traded on Friday.