Facebook stock starts up, then goes flat in public debut

Facebook is trading up about 1% as of this afternoon as investors seek to put a dollar value on the company that turned online social networking into a global cultural phenomenon. Earlier today, the company’s 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Surrounded by cheering Facebook employees and wearing his signature hoodie, Zuckerberg pushed the button that signals the opening of the stock market in New York. The morning’s events followed an all-night “hackathon” at the company, where engineers stayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebook and its 900 million users. On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers arranging the IPO settled on a price of $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16 billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion. That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company ever to go public. Now the stock market will assign a dollar value to Facebook that will rise and fall with investor whims. Though the stock rose as much as 8% in early trading today, as of 3 p.m. it had dropped back to an even $38.