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Is anyone going to short this? With an IPO of this size, that sounds like the beginning of a story that ends with "and then, in shame, he jumped from his 15th story window."

No matter what you think of its long-term performance potential, I can't understand how anyone would bet against Facebook in the first few weeks.

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It won't be realistic to short FB in the first few weeks. Shorting is dependent on someone lending you shares, and that will cost some absurd fees in the immediate future.

There's always the futures market.

I think it takes a little while for that to get started on a new issue, also... doesn't it?

Update: Per this article, the option market will start 6 days after the Facebook IPO:

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB500014240527487039645045...

(From some long-ago memory about other IPOs, I had thought it would be weeks or even a few months.)

"I can't understand how anyone would bet against Facebook in the first few weeks."

Shorting the other recent internet IPO's (LinkedIn, Pandora, Groupon and Zynga) would have resulted in a profit in each instance. I did a blog post on this because the screenshots illustrate this point far better than words:

http://franceschine.com/post/22247672839/the-case-for-shorti...

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