There was an employee lockup of Facebook stock, if I remember correctly, so Facebook employees were not selling.
Please correct me if I misunderstood something.
The lockup applies to shares on the open market after IPO. That doesn't preclude someone from participating in the IPO itself.
Got it, thanks for explaining.
Many Facebook shareholders sold at the IPO. Zuckerberg sold 30M shares and other large investors with huge allocations also sold some. It was calculated, not a free-for-all.
Interesting; how is it that employees are able to trade right after the IPO? I thought there was a waiting period for insiders.
not every employee is an insider. Public companies that issue stock to employees can limit the number of people that are made privy to non-public information about the performance of the company, such that some/many employees are allowed to freely trade.