Comments on: Facebook muppet of the day: UBS

By: Marcobliss

Marcobliss — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 04:26:20 +0000

What is amazing is that UBS was so ill informed that they would go long on facebook at $40 Fb is a fade like AOL was and will be gone in a few years so where does that leave the people who bought into this $100b hype?

By: jimbojones23

jimbojones23 — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 09:00:21 +0000

Instead of saying: “Apologies to UBS” after having written such a dreadful article full of misinformation, you really should change the title instead of calling them muppets…

As you said in your first paragraph, CNBC has done an AWEFUL job at journalism and what they claim makes absolutely no sense. You were right until there, but then you make atrocious claims about some 100 million share trading and you even go as far as speculating on their strategy! That’s possibly even worse journalism than CNBC.

The least you should do right now is UPDATE THE TITLE of the article and surely you should go as far as completely DELETE OR EDIT IT.

Don’t you think ?? Or is Reuters OK with having a completely made up story?

By: spbaines

spbaines — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 11:51:42 +0000

Facebook shares peaked at $45.00 and since troughed at $25.52. A 43% decline. Therefore, to lose $350m, UBS must have gone long with a $813m position exactly at the peak and sold exactly at the trough. In all likelihood, UBS didn’t hit the peak (when buying) or the trough (when selling), meaning the position must have been even larger, most likely over $1bn. Which, as you say, raises the question of why UBS’s equity team was long >$1bn of Facebook stock on IPO day.

By: Silk32

Silk32 — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 23:06:57 +0000

Should Morgan Stanley Bankers Responsible For ‘Facebook IPO Fiasco’ Be Banned? http://seekingalpha.com/a/dum1

By: crocodilechuck

crocodilechuck — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:16:54 +0000

Sounds like a classic instance of ‘The Beer Game’ from MIT’s Sloan School of Management (detailed in Peter Senge’s 1992 book, ‘The Fifth Discipline’ (Chapter Three).

By: Auros

Auros — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:06:37 +0000

Maybe somebody at UBS made the same mistake as Kid Dynamite — thought they were entering a buy for a certain number of shares, but were actually entering the number of round lots… Wouldn’t be the first time somebody executed a trade that stupidly — e.g. the trader in Japan who swapped the price and number-of-shares fields.

By: KidDynamite

KidDynamite — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:16:59 +0000

Felix – I’m told that the settings on that screenshot are for ACTUAL shares, not the standard x100 shares, so it’s only 860,000 (not 86mm) in that screenshot – FYI. I edited my post.

My inclination is that UBS definitely did NOT intend to go massively long FB – but it may not have been Nasdaq’s fault – it seems that UBS may have had their own systems f*ckups (triggered by Nasdaq’s? who knows)…