In celebration of the one-week anniversary of FaceBomb's ultimate #Fail, Bloomberg TV [5] is reporting that Facebook's first week of trading is the worst large IPO performance in a decade (aside from the BATS debacle -which lasted nanoseconds and potentially never really IPO'd) - well played Margin Stanley, well played! And for those that like to see the spectacle in all its glory, NANEX has provided a graphical view of the chaos as FacePlant came and went last Friday...
And some scary animation from NANEX, which we will have more to say about shortly:
From Nanex' Eric Hunsader:
Watch Nasdaq's quote (first box to appear - 10 o'clock). Note the crazy bid prices are higher than the equally crazy ask prices. After trading opens, Nasdaq's quote will start turning red when it's no longer eligible to set the NBBO. Watch how quotes on the other exchanges react wildly causing the price to evaporate.
Each box represents one exchange. The SIP (UQDF in this case) is the box at 6 o'clock. It shows the National Best Bid/Offer. The shapes represent quote changes which are the result of a change to the top of the book at each exchange. The time at the top of the screen is the time of the last quote or trade update in Eastern Time HH:MM:SS:mmm (mmm = millisecond). We accelerate time until the open, and then we slow time down so you can see what goes on at the millisecond level. A millisecond (ms) is 1/1000th of a second. The blink of an eye is about 200 ms.
Note how every exchange must process every quote from the others -- for proper trade through price protection. This complex web of technology must run flawlessly every millisecond of the trading day, or arbitrage (HFT profit) opportunities will appear.