Miasma in the House of Bite Me

shortformblog:

moneyisnotimportant:

soupsoup:

Underwriters prop up Facebook stock to prevent it from tanking on IPO day

On the left side, you see the “bids” that are in the market for the stock. Those are the offers to buy. On the right you see the “asks”, which are asking prices by sellers. Note that next to each bid or ask there’s a “size” which is the size of the offer to buy or sell. Note two things: At the top of the left column, you see lots of bids at $38.00 on various trading platforms. (The BATS exchange, Arca, etc.). What’s more, the size of those bids are HUGE. Hundreds of thousands of shares compared to relatively tiny asks and bids everywhere else.

Should be interesting to see if they’ll still be there to save $FB on Monday.

I’d think that the SEC would have a problem with this. No matter how you slice it, the bottom line is they’re manipulating the market.

To the naked eye, the stock staying at or above $38 looked pretty unusual, so there’s a ton to scrutinize here.