The $16B Facebook IPO was lackluster at best. Ticker FB hit a high of 45 in the opening minutes, but quickly faded. The most interesting aspect was the trading going into the close. For the last half hour, someone was holding the initial IPO price of $38:
If you look at the VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Price), it appears that about 120M shares traded at $38. That is $38*120M= $4,560,000,000 of stock value:
I am wondering whether the lead on the IPO, Morgan Stanley, ended up with a ton of shares on its books at the end of the day. In any case, it might appear that the bankers already spent their IPO fee in short order…
