Facebook's first day of trading after its IPO looks to be a bruising one. The company's stock was down about 4.5% in pre-market trading, dipped below $37 and then fell about 8% below $36 upon opening and then fell as much as 12% later in the morning. Not surprisingly, the stock is also the most active on Nasdaq.
The lackluster opening comes after Facebook's long-awaited IPO landed with a thud Friday, posting a paltry 23-cent gain over its $38 opening share price. Though various theories abound to why Facebook's IPO didn't take off, one possibility is that glitches from Nasdaq that delayed trading in the stock for 30 minutes may have hurt the stock's momentum.
Facebook's sluggish performance seems to be dragging down other social media stocks as well. Before the opening bell, stock prices for Zynga, LinkedIn, Renren and Yelp were all down.
Stay tuned.