Nasdaq messed up Facebook's IPO, and now Facebook is totally going to show them by taking its stock away from Nasdaq and hooking up with Nasdaq's frenemy, the New York Stock Exchange.
That is the latest gossip from the world of Facebook, whose stock today managed to dead-cat bounce by more than 3 percent to exactly $32. Apparently the analyst at Needham took mercy on Facebook and rated it a "buy" with a $40 price target. It's now down just 15.9 percent from its IPO price of $38 on Friday. So congratulations on all that.
Reuters and Bloomberg are both reporting, citing an anonymous source, that Facebook and the NYSE have been furiously sexting each other about Facebook dumping Nasdaq and taking up with the NYSE instead.
One of the many, many problems with Facebook's IPO was that the Nasdaq wasn't prepared to handle the onslaught of flash-trading robots that descended on Facebook's IPO Friday morning and picked it clean. The theory goes that one of the handful of humanoids still peopling the floor of the NYSE, augmenting the computers there in a cyborg sort of arrangement, would have stepped in and kept Facebook's stock from getting sucked into what Wired has called a High Frequency Tractor Beam.
Nasdaq, which is one of the many players in this drama being sued over the IPO, has admitted it didn't quite figure out the best solution to the problem with Facebook trading on Friday. One Nasdaq official even told the Wall Street Journal they maybe should have put the kibosh on the IPO for a while until they got it sorted out.
Could this be enough to cause Facebook to dump the Nasdaq for the NYSE? We have no idea. CNBC's Bob Pisani said the NYSE straight-up told him they haven't been talking at all about Facebook jumping ship. Bloomberg later got a similar comment from the NYSE, which said such conversations wouldn't even be appropriate at this time. But stranger things have happened, at least in this IPO.
Speaking of which, Wedbush Securities tech analyst Michael Pachter is taking a told-you-so lap today. He warned the world that Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie would bring hellfire and damnation on Facebook's stock, but did anybody listen? No, they only laughed and laughed at Michael Pachter. Well, who is laughing now? Michael Pachter, that is who. Also, us, still, at Michael Pachter. And DealBreaker, also at Michael Pachter.