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Comment by throwaway1979 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway1979·

Someone mentioned on CNBC that he had placed an order (and seem to have gotten) 100 shares of FB via e-trade. Can retail investors (aka ... unsophisticated Joes like me) get in on the IPO allocation? I thought the initial shares were only offered to large investors (> 100K purchases). This doesn't help me for FB, but would be useful info in the future.

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Yes, brokerages offer qualified customers access to IPO allocation that the brokerage has access to. It is at their discretion who they allow to participate. Generally, most brokerages will ban you from IPO access if you get allocated shares and sell them within a certain period, usually 90 days or so.

Here is a description of the process for ETrade: https://us.etrade.com/e/t/prospectestation/help?id=130105000...

I got 50 shares from e-Trade. Never used eTrade before. It was one of the few platforms that were open for retailers. eTrade mentions that if I flip those shares in less than a month, I might not be able to get access to future IPO shares.

There are tons of Facebook shares floating around - at least partially due to the fact that they increased the offering size by 85 million shares (25%) on Wednesday. Morgan called four separate times between weds and Thursday trying to sling shares.

In general it's usually harder to get allocations but not as hard as you imagine - retail investors always seem to get some.

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