No 'Like' on LI over Facebook IPO fallout

Judy Carey, a Massapequa resident and Facebook investor, still won't get her new backyard stoop.

The stay-at-home mom had planned to pay to fix flaws in a previous remodeling job by selling the 150 Facebook shares she bought on the stock's May 18 debut. Instead, she has watched the shares, which she bought at $41 a piece -- $3 above the initial offering price -- fizzle instead of pop. The stock closed at $26.81 a share Wednesday, up 94 cents in Nasdaq trading.

The Long Island investor took no solace from the Nasdaq's announcement Wednesday that it plans to offer brokerage firms $40 million in cash and trading discounts to help cover losses they sustained because of electronic glitches in Facebook's IPO.

Facebook went public May 18 amid great fanfare, but computer glitches at the Nasdaq threw the day into chaos. The opening was delayed by half an hour. In the confusion brokerage firms lost millions of dollars, and the Nasdaq is seeking to reimburse some of those losses.

"Well, good for them, but that's not going to do anything for me," said Carey, who wants to hold the stock until she can break even.

It isn't known if any of the member firms will share the reimbursements with their customers.

Even if they did, the amounts wouldn't come close to covering investors' losses on the fast-falling stock.

Thousands of investors bought more than 421 million Facebook shares, according to a local law firm seeking class action status for a lawsuit that claims some securities firms failed to disclose widely that they had lowered their Facebook revenue projections before the offering.

The proposed Nasdaq reimbursement plan is subject to Securities and Exchange Commission approval.

Melville resident Martin Blumberg, who once considered himself lucky because he snagged 400 shares at the $38-a-share IPO price, pooh-poohs Nasdaq's brokerage reimbursement plan.

"Why would all the big players get something, and small guys aren't even thought about?" said Blumberg, 70, who co-owns the Port Washington-based Auto Barn chain.

"I am very upset with how the whole thing was handled," he said, referring to allegations about the revenue projections.

At this point he just wants to break even on the stock and wishes he had never heard of Facebook.

"Maybe that would have been better," he said.

This story was supplemented with reports from The Associated Press.