For a while yesterday it looked like the $40 level in FB was being defended against selling pressure, they eventually lost that battle, but not 1 time did FB drop below its IPO of $38 which would have been an embarrassment to MS, et .al. who took FB public should the stock have lost their clients on the first day.
Take a look at the proof.
On a 5 min chart the $40 level was defended, but they lost that, they couldn't afford to have their clients lose money and FB didn't tick below $38 the rest of the day, but it took some firepower from Wall Street.
Look at the string of bars right at $38 or a few cents above.
While there's not a lot of history, 3C can pick up on the large institutional orders, note a desperate attempt before $40 was broken and then an all out effort to hold $38 , which they did.
Here's the bid/ask for FB, on the left are the bids (buyers) on the right the ask (sellers). To the very left of each is the exchange the orders were routed through the price at which the stock was bid or asked, the size of the order in shares and the time.
If you look at the size of orders on the bid side, they are between 20 thousand shares and over 400 hundred thousand shares, that's institutional money defending the IPO price. Now look at the ask side's size, most orders are below 5,000 shares, nearly all except 1 or 2 are below 10,000 shares.
For a little while any way, FB is probably a safe bet at $38 as it will be defended-not forever and maybe not much longer as I believe most of the the float was turned over yesterday alone, but probably for the next several days.
I just thought you might like to see the inner workings and politics of an IPO.
