As someone who can’t remember the heady days of the 1990s-era tech bubble, I’m not used to tech IPO craziness. But this is a whole new level of insanity. Some people are willing to pay anything to “be a part of history”.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jacob Bunge reports:
Knight Capital Group, one of the biggest aggregators of US retail share trading, is seeing orders for Facebook come in from brokerage firm clients – including one from an investor willing to buy the stock even if it rises as high as $4,000, according to managing director Steve Kay. Orders like this is one of the reasons Nasdaq will wait until 11 a.m. or later to release Facebook stock for trading – the exchange and bank underwriters will wait until it’s clear that there is enough selling interest so that the stock doesn’t shoot to head-spinning levels straight away.
The quoting period could be extended as the underwriters match up buying and selling interest to determine the correct price at which Facebook will first change hands.
Remember that this is a limit order, meaning that whomever placed that trade is willing to pay as much as $4000 per share. How anyone could justify paying so much money for shares in Facebook is inexplicable. But today is a very weird day.