Fidelity clients confused about stock ownership.

More here:
Facebook Faces More Trading Problems

When Mark Zuckerberg’s stated mission to connect and empower people collides with Wall Street’s actual mission, which is to empower and enrich the well-connected, guess which mission prevails? Wall Street’s, hands down. That’s the lesson we can take from the debacle of Facebook’s initial public stock offering. Read full article > >

Read more:
In Facebook IPO debacle, Wall Street prevails

European stock markets have fallen sharply amid concerns over Greece ahead of a European Union summit.

View post:
Shares hit by concern over Greece

In early spring of 1985, when I still believed I could play, a stumpy point guard approached me in a postgame handshake line. After his junior college team drubbed mine in Stockton, Calif., I think I nodded, blurted out “Good game” and grasped his palm. Read full article > >

Read more:
Oklahoma City Thunder Coach Scott Brooks never gave up on his dream

Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic is a Bay Area writer and editor. Her first book Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater's Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate , a humorous non-fiction narrative and exposé on the lives of picky eaters, will be released by Perigee Books on July 3. My husband is a calculus professor and one who brings food items into the classroom with surprising regularity. No, he doesn't bring pies on Pi day – though he can recite the string up to a couple dozen digits – but he does bring Pringles. As a teaching aid. This afternoon when I walked into his study, I nearly tripped over a plastic Safeway bag filled with six red cans of Pringles. “Is it Pringles Day already?” I asked, nudging the bag. Pringles Day is the day Dr. Mathra lectures on the classification of critical points in multivariable calculus , and he uses the saddle-shaped Pringles to illustrate his points. After class, the students get to eat his illustrations. It's their favorite day. However, this Pringles Eve, Dr. Mathra is kicking himself because in addition to stocking up on Pringles, which were invented by Proctor & Gamble & heaven in the 1960s, he also got an oblong can of Lays Stax, the parvenu potato chip that's only been around since 2003. Personally, I've never been turned on by Lays Stax. Not only are they covered with the stink of being the unoriginal upstart that is so obviously trying to rip-off the adored-for-decades potato chip, but they're not thin and delicate enough, they're not oily enough, and they're not addictive enough. However, none of the above is Dr. Mathra's complaint with them. “It's ridiculous!” he fumed, “They set themselves up as a Pringles competitor, but it's an entirely different curvature!” The shape of the Lays Stax – known as a parabolic cylinder – is way less mathematically interesting than the hyperbolic paraboloid of a Pringles, which is also known as a saddle. In math, the Pringles saddle shape exemplifies how you can stand at the flat point of a surface and not be at the highest point of your surroundings or at the lowest point of your surroundings. Basically, you could call the saddle “the taint” of critical points. T'aint the highest point, t'aint the lowest. “Um, sure. If you wanted to be crass about it,” Dr. Mathra mumbles. The big three types of critical points in multivariable calculus are the bottom of a bowl (aka the local min), the top of a dome (the local max), or in the middle of a saddle (saddle point). “The Lays Stax shape isn't even as interesting as a bowl – it's a wishy-washy bowl. I mean, you can make the Lays shape with a piece of paper ,” Dr. Mathra explains. (In my twelve years of being married to him, I have frequently found that being able to make something with paper is met with derision.) See, you can't replicate the Pringles saddle shape with a piece of paper without cutting the paper and actually adding more paper to it and that makes it more mathematically desirable. Sensing he has my attention throughout all of this raving, Dr. Mathra continues, “They've got these Lays Stax right next to the Pringles as though they are equivalent. How can they do that? One is a positive semi-definite quadratic form and the other is an indefinite quadratic form – they're not even the same definiteness!” When I don't react, he insists, “Oh, come on – that will KILL in class tomorrow!” And why should you, the non-calculus student, care about the Pringles saddle form? The principal application of calculus is optimizing, or determining whether you are at a maximum. You use calculus whenever you want to optimize, well, anything. “If you are at a local max (the top of a dome), everywhere you go moves you down. If you're at a saddle, there's a way you can go that will take you up.” Knowing this is important when thinking about increasing filthy lucre, precious time, diminishing resources, or a supply of Pringles. And that, my friends, is why Pringles will always, always beat Lays Stax. Flavor is subjective. Math is irrefutable.

Continue reading here:
Saddle up for maximum snack satisfaction (mathematically speaking)

Facebook’s stock was down more than 10 percent on Monday morning, to around $34 a share.

See more here:
DealBook: Facebook Shares Slump on Second Day

How have other high-flying internet stocks performed?

Continue reading here:
Facebook: How the others fared

Stock price stays even on first day.

Original post:
Facebook Debut Falls Flat

After a gain of more than 10 percent at the start, the stock drifted back to the offering price, then rose again.

More here:
DealBook: Facebook Shares Open Trading With Modest Gains

As Facebook floats itself on the stock exchange, technology experts attending the Future Everything conference in Manchester give their views on the company’s worth.

Continue reading here:
VIDEO: ‘Is Facebook worth $100 billion?’

Facebook, the social network that began eight years ago in a Harvard dorm room, will debut Friday on the stock markets having raised $16 billion, making it the third largest initial public offering in U.S. history. Read full article > >

See original here:
Facebook’s market debut draws criticism from lawmakers

Facebook prices its shares at $38 each ahead of one of the most eagerly anticipated share flotations in recent stock market history.

Read the original:
Float values Facebook at $104bn

Another milestone they count down in Times Square, less deliriously, is the moment a company goes public by selling shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Thursday, May 3, at 9:29:50 a.m., it’s the turn of the Carlyle Group , Washington’s semi-mythic private-equity leviathan, the capital’s most fabled generator of cash, conspiracy theories and conspicuous philanthropy. Read full article > >

Originally posted here:
David Rubenstein, co-founder of Carlyle Group and Washington philanthropist

Aims for stock prices to be $34 to $38 a share.

See the article here:
Facebook IPO Balloons to $104B

While Spain stocks rebound on bank nationalization plan.

Original post:
Merkel: EU Must Have Austerity