Market Players Gear Up for Facebook Offering
Anticipation was strong for Facebook Inc.'s initial public offering as the Nasdaq Stock Market indicated shares would start trading under the stock symbol FB around 11 a.m. EDT Friday.</br></br>Facebook's IPO could be a "nice shot in the arm" for brokerages, said Sean Kelly, a managing director with brokerage Knight Capital Group. "We're expecting a big day" for volume, he said, adding he hoped the deal would spark enthusiasm for stocks among individual investors.</br></br>On Thursday afternoon, financial advisers at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney learned their allocation of Facebook shares for clients would be 5,000 per account, according to people familiar with the matter.</br></br>The nearly 17,200 brokers at the retail brokerage joint venture were notified of the number Thursday afternoon, these people said. The new amount though, is flexible as clients with more than one account could receive more than 5,000 shares, one of the people said.</br></br>Traders at T3 Trading Group LLC were set to huddle in their Lower Manhattan office before the opening bell to discuss trading strategies for Facebook. The firm says it has been honing its tactics this year as other social-media companies made their trading debuts.