UBS, Citadel, Knight also announced losses, bringing total market maker losses to around $115m: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-facebook-nasdaq-lo

UBS, Citadel, Knight also announced losses, bringing total market maker losses to around $115m: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-facebook-nasdaq-losses-idUSBRE84O18S20120525 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/us-facebook-nasdaq... A longer read on all the Nasdaq glitches http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-facebook-problems-idUSBRE84P00Y20120526 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/26/us-facebook-proble... Hard to know the counterfactual, but if the IPO had a clean start and some traders hadn't been scared to the sidelines by not knowing if trades were going through on NASDAQ, the stock might have traded up. If it looks like everybody's buying, people hop in. If it looks like a dud, people hold off. Social proof is a powerful thing. In the long run, the market is a profit-weighing machine, not a voting machine, so a few opening trades shouldn't really matter. On the other hand the perception of a hot stock and company impact ability to hire, acquire etc. Remember how a Yahoo stock drop nixed their handshake agreement to acquire Facebook. The stock price can impact the business and, in an extreme case, create the reality it tries to measure.