At precisely 11:34 a.m. Facebook went public.
It opened on Wall Street at $38 dollars a share, and closed at $38.23.
Jay Donnaruma of Janney Montgomery Scott of Albany says he didn't buy a share of Facebook stock for a single client today.
He says that's not because he doesn't think it's a good investment, but rather that he thinks Friday, specifically, was not the right time to buy it.
"I think what we have to wait for is, in 90 days, there's a whole bunch of stock that's going to come back on the market also, and that the 'hold period' for the insiders will be up in 90 days and there could be a lot more stock for sale," Donnaruma said.
Around the Capital Region, some people think Facebook is just the 'it thing,' today.
Linda Watson of Guilderland said, "My thought is that, I think Facebook is just a phase, and it's going to die out, and I don't think I'd want to invest in it."
Others believe the popular social networking site would be a good investment, but feel shut out from the whole 'going public' process.
Herm Ungerman said, "The problem is, that most small investors have been blocked out. Most of the stock that has been bought and sold, if not all of it, is to major investors, institutional and so fourth."
But Donnaruma says 'would be' Facebook investors just need to be patient.
"I would like to sit back to wait and see what happens. I think it will be exciting to see what's next? Where does it go from here? What is the future? I think we're in the Nicene, development stage of what's going to go on with social networking," Donnaruma said.
The veteran investor went on to say, "I think it will be interesting to see if they expand the advertising and expand the framework of what it can do."
Donnaruma says he thought the most fascinating part of the 'Facebook goes public' story was that a social networking site was able to completely trump the news that's been so big on Wall street for weeks.
"Greece was not in the spotlight today! No one talked about Greece, which had been the big overhang on the stock marked for the last two and a half weeks," he said, shaking his head.
But with a Facebook stock closing price only 23 cents higher than what it started at, some analysts who had predicted much higher numbers for the first day are calling today 'a disappointment.'
But Donnaruma totally disagrees, adding that thanks to recent investments Facebook has made, the best may be 'what's next' for the social networking site.
"A lot of the news that's coming out in the evening here, after the close of the market is saying that it was 'disappointing.' Well I don't think it was disappointing. I think this company raised a lot of money, and I think a lot of this money will go to use to buy other companies that are incubator stages that will help Facebook grow. And I think those people who poo-poo all of this stuff, and say 'Oh my gosh! Here you have Facebook, and it didn't do anything…' Well it sure has done some something! And $104 billion dollars, I think, is a lot of money."
Donnaruma says a lot of investors actually 'sold off' other profitable stocks today in order to free up some cash to buy Facebook.
Interestingly, and ironically he says that 'sell off' caused all stocks to trade lower, including Facebook.
