A lot of the talk today has been about Facebook's IPO which, while successful, did have a few surprises in store for Facebook and onlookers. First, Facebook didn't start trading on time due to a Nasdaq glitch. Apparently Nasdaq had an issue with its message relay system which wasn't sending out confirmations of purchases and sales.

That glitch doesn't seem to have affected total trade volume, however, as the Facebook IPO becomes the first one ever to trade 500M stocks in its first day. Prices for the stocks remained fairly level, spiking up to $42 and closing at $38.37. The stock price was set at $38 to start trading off. Within the first 30 seconds, 82 million shares had been traded.

It's a bit surprising that the stock didn't spike above $42 given the hype surrounding the IPO. The fact that it traded pretty level is a good indication that Facebook chose a good opening price. As such, it netted Facebook just about as much money as it possibly could and didn't give the early traders the money instead.