Keep Hating on Facebook; Long-Term Investors Love Cheap Shares
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- An overabundance of Facebook (FB) hate exists "out there." Out there being society en masse, among investors and within "the 1%" that makes up the cozy confines of Wall Street.
It's gotten to the point, really, where it's become childish. Mark Zuckerberg can't even marry his main squeeze post-IPO without people questioning the timing. Why not follow up one of the biggest days of your young life with another one of the biggest days of your young life?
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And, of course, there's the hate that sometimes borders on vitriol for the IPO. One of the more light-hearted and clever examples comes from Twitter: Breaking: Pets.com sock puppet seen laughing maniacally around Menlo Park. Yes and I just saw a Webvan truck pull up in front of Facebook headquarters.
Then, there's downright hate. Here's an example courtesy of TheStreet's otherwise perfectly sane and logical Dana Blankenhorn, who called the whole Facebook IPO a "big lie":The insiders knew the story: The brokers who were in the IPO were standing by with orders to buy at $38, no matter what, all day. And they knew, we all know, that won't go on for long.I know Dana well enough to know that he has been around the stock market, particularly covering tech stocks and such, for a long time. Yet, he, and so many others, run frantically acting like this is all new. As if, this past Friday, the stock market became a place where insiders get the best deals and know the story, while the general public is in the dark. They all need to look up the definition of "insider." It's been this way for quite some time; and, it's not about to change anytime soon. So, the markets gets rigged to favor insiders. Tell us we something we do not know already. TheStreet's Stephanie Link provides one of the most rational and sensible post-mortems on the Facebook IPO. While recognizing Morgan Stanley's (MS) failings (yet another shocking development), Link also points out that it was not just the little guy that lost out on this IPO. Her video is more than worth your time. Even more importantly, though, Link acknowledges that Facebook can make a strong long play for some long-term investors. She just thinks that type of bullishness appears more prudent around $28 to $31, the original offering price for the IPO. I would add two things to that assessment:
Even while this was happening, with Facebook trades coming across at both $42 and $38 and change at the same time in after-hours trading, CNBC kept pretending nothing was happening on its own ticker.
Why wasn't anyone, on any network, allowed to say that this new technology emperor was wearing no clothes, that the company wasn't worth anything near what brokers were claiming it was worth, that a fraud was being perpetrated on the public investor?
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