Facebook"s long awaited and highly anticipated launch of its IPO has started after suffering from a delay. The stock in the social networking site was supposed to begin trading at 11 am Eastern time today on the NASDAQ stock market but that didn"t happen until 11:30 am. The Wall Street Journal reports that some stock traders have had issues changing and cancelling orders for the stock ahead of the IPO launch. Facebook is being traded until the symbol "FB".
Earlier this morning, as scheduled, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg "rang" the bell to start the trading day at the NASDAQ stock market in New York City. The stock market closes for its day at 4 pm Eastern time. Facebook has also launched its investor website today.
On Thursday, Facebook announced that trading would start at a price of $38 a share. The initial public offering of shares is expected to raise as much as $16 billion for Facebook. The stock price will also value the company at about $104 billion. That would make it the third biggest IPO launch ever in the United States.
Zuckerberg, who owns the largest amount of stock of the company, will, on paper anyway, be worth over $17 billion when trading on Facebook begins.