The NASDAQ 100 includes 100 of the biggest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ based on market capitalization. Computer hardware and software, telecommunications, retail/wholesale trade and biotechnology are all represented.

Infosys left the index making room for Facebook, which Facebook now makes up about 1% of it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook stock had been trending upward prior to the debut. As of the time of this writing, it’s at $27.58 (-0.40, -1.43%).

The company did confirm today that Instagram, which it recently acquired, will be getting ads, so there’s another monetization avenue for the company, which can’t hurt. The company seems to want to keep people seeing images on Instagram itself too, considering the recent goings-on with Twitter.

Google has put out a pair of Hurricane Sandy-related maps, including this New York-specific one:

The New York Stock Exchange said in a statement, “We support the consensus of the markets and the regulatory community that the dangerous conditions developing as a result of Hurricane Sandy will make it extremely difficult to ensure the safety of our people and communities, and safety must be our first priority. We will work with the industry to determine the next steps in restoring trading as soon as the situation permits.”

NASDAQ also said over the weekend that its decision to close was made after consulting with other exchanges in the U.S. as well as government officials and regulators, such as the SEC.

The storm, which has already left at least 65 people in the Caribbean dead, has also led to a number of other closures, including the cancellations of events from both Google and Facebook.

Meanwhile, the storm has prompted the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to take down their paywalls, so more readers can stay informed.

NASDAQ stated this weekend that the decision to close was made through a consultation with other U.S. exchanges, government officials, and regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It also stated that the “continuity of our markets” and the state of emergency declared in New York factored into the decision not to open today. All of its exchanges outside the U.S. will be open for business today.

The NYSE released a similar statement, emphasizing the safety of its employees:

We support the consensus of the markets and the regulatory community that the dangerous conditions developing as a result of Hurricane Sandy will make it extremely difficult to ensure the safety of our people and communities, and safety must be our first priority. We will work with the industry to determine the next steps in restoring trading as soon as the situation permits.

Hurricane Sandy is scheduled to hit the Northeastern coast of the U.S. sometime today or early Tuesday. The storm is a category one hurricane and is expected to carry a large storm surge along with high winds. In addition, a wintery weather pattern coming from the west is expected to meet Sandy, possibly creating what has been dubbed a “frankenstorm” and covering the Northeast in snow.

Previously the company had debated taking their shares over to the NYSE after Nasdaq experienced a devastating computer glitch that left big bank trading desks flying blind on the morning of their IPO launched.

Currently, Facebook, the Nasdaq, and Facebook’s lead underwriters are facing investor lawsuits stemming from the botched IPO. More recently, Facebook has put a lot of the blame on the Nasdaq for poor trading performance and decrease investor confidence.

While Facebook and its underwriters are seeking to consolidate their lawsuits, Nasdaq is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators for the alterations they made to computer codes which they say led to the computer communication breakdown.

In the meantime, Nasdaq has taken steps to compensate investors who incurred loses on the first day of Facebook trading as a result of the glitch. Facebook, on the other hand, still claims they carried out the IPO in a way that complies with all regulatory guidelines, and with full financial disclosure to investors.

So, as we wait to see what the outcome of these lawsuits and investigations will be, Facebook has decided there couldn’t be any harm in sticking with the exchange they originally chose. I think it’s a really good idea to stick with the Nasdaq. I don’t think investors, the Nasdaq, or Facebook can sustain anymore upheaval surrounding the IPO. It’s wise to buckle down and get all the non-sense cleared up first.

Stability should be the strategy going forward. Hopefully, going public wont be seen as Facebook’s first step to going down the tubes when we look back. While the way the deal went down hurt investor confidence and jaded many other internet property’s decisions to go public, it could just be a temporary setback if they play their cards right.

In fact, they have seen a couple other cases of so called, trading communication breakdowns coming from the NYSE, and now they want answers.

According to Nasdaq, they rewrote some computer code in an effort to jump start trading on the day of the IPO, and believe that is what could have led to the breakdown.

While the SEC is concerned that stock exchanges aren’t properly testing their equipment, they are also looking into whether the Nasdaq violated rules when it rewrote the code. More importantly, the agency’s enforcement unit has opened several cases to investigate the controls currently in place at all stock exchanges.

The SEC is also looking into whether some exchanges are giving preferable treatment to high-end customers and firms who repeatedly place large orders. Trust in the exchanges is an integral part of the system and regulators are working to make sure guiltiness are being enforced.

Aside from glitches with the exchanges, federal lawmakers are also pushing for reform in the way public offering are priced and the disclosure of that information. More specifically they have expressed concern over how much power banks have in the process. U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday informing them that new rules are needed.

Early last week, Facebook filed documents with the courts hoping to consolidate investor lawsuits stemming from the IPO. They also blamed Nasdaq for a majority of the problems claiming their malfunction scared off investors and eroded demand.

If you remember, Facebook stock sunk down to the $25 range for awhile, but it has slowly crept back up to $33. They still haven’t gotten anywhere near the $38 per share opening day price, but it looks like that are at atleast stable in the lower $30′s.

So hopefully we’ll see some resolve to these investigations and lawsuits sometime soon. It’s only been a month since the IPO, but it seems like the list of headaches coming out of the event for everybody just keeps growing. It can’t be good for anyone’s business. We’ll keep you updated on all things Facebook.

The remarks come from a court filing by Facebook and Morgan Stanley who seek to combine more than 40 state and federal lawsuits brought against Facebook and their lead underwriters stemming from the events of their May 18th initial public offering.

Essentially, the filing states that Facebook and their underwriters didn’t do anything illegal or out of the ordinary regarding the IPO, and that the poor trading performance is more the result of Nasdaq’s, now infamous, trading desk computer glitch than anything else.

The court filing explains:

“The commencement of trading in Facebook shares was delayed as a result of problems with Nasdaq’s software systems, which impaired the orderly execution of trades and price levels,”

Facebook also released all of the communications they had with the Securities and Exchange Commission in a separate filing in the months before the IPO period. This is a common practice for a company after the confidential period during an IPO ends.

In the meantime, Facebook shares are trading up around $32, which should come as a relief to investors. The stock climb seems to coincide with ComScore’s latest report on the effectiveness of the company’s advertising model. According to ComScore, Facebook brand advertising does result in a significant lift when it comes time for consumers to purchase and select on brand over another.

So, while we might not see Facebook trading back trading at $38 per share, there still seems to be a lot of interest in owning stock in the company. As with any investment, only time will tell.

Despite closing just above $10 per share on Friday, early morning trading reached as high as $11.07, and Groupon is currently trading for $10.75 per share.

Scott Devitt, analyst for Morgan Stanley comments on Groupon’s performance:

“Groupon has emerged as the leading local e-commerce company in an industry with significant barriers to scale,”

“Its advantage due to scale (largest merchant and customer base) and technology (8 acquisitions year to date) has enabled it to accelerate North American revenue growth while improving its margins.”

Devitt also believes Groupon has the capacity to meet the following highly-debated challenges:

* Preserve its competitive position as local e-commerce leader…

* Maintain a ~40% take rate within daily deals segment…

* Continue to grow revenue while expanding margins and…

* Avoid deal fatigue by continuing to improve targeting and personalization.

If you recall, a little over a week ago, Groupon was suffering badly on the stock market as shares fell below $10, and the overall market value of the company slumped below a $6 billion market cap, or less than what Googled offered to buy them for back in 2010.

It is also worth noting that Groupon’s IPO lockup period just ended, and some investors may have been eager to relinquish their shares of the company after a calendar year of poor performance.

This doesn’t mean Groupon is out of the woods yet, but it is a bit of good news in a very conservative investment market. Perhaps Groupon can get its stock back up to IPO prices.

The first point they raise involves small investors, and the mentality they took when evaluating the investment. According to HBR, there were many who rushed out and to open their first investment account just to take advantage of Facebook’s offering. They believed it was the next big thing and just had to be a part of it.

As many of us already know, and it is easy to say in retrospect, Facebook has already been around too long to be the next big thing. In fact, Facebook was the next big thing half a decade ago. So those operating under this premiss were already at least five years behind the trends.

Also according to HBR, many people believed it was a sound investment because of a psychological phenomenon commonly referred to as Availability Bias. They specifically reference a man who took $5000 of his own money, then borrowed another $5000 from his mother, and put it all in Facebook (this was all the money he had).

With the above imagery in mind, consider the definition of Availability Bias:

“Availability Bias: When confronted with a decision, humans’ thinking is influenced by what is personally relevant, salient, recent or dramatic. Put another way, humans estimate the probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine.”

Now this is a very reasonable explanation for the man’s mistake however, if you are making your very first investment, without the aid of a professional, it is just plain stupidity to invest your entire nest egg (savings), and part of someone else’s, in something you feel as a gut reaction, or shorthand to an informed decision.

Gut reactions are typically reserved for someone who has knowledge of the playing field and has learned a lesson or two.

Furthermore, it is very unwise, and probably violates the most elementary rule of investments, to take all your resources and bet them on one horse (one company’s stock). I think everyone knows, whether you’re investing $500 or $10,000, balance is the key.

For instance, If you have a lot invested in risky up and coming technology stocks, it is also a good idea to balance those investments with something mature, stable, and not likely to go away anytime soon.

When investors pull their money out of high-risk areas because of a huge loss, they usually funnel that capital back into stable investments, and can temporarily create gains in large, stable stocks. The whole balance theory.

The HBR does give some excellent advice in their article to help people with future investments:

* Focus on discovering customers’ needs. When you discover unmet customer needs, you naturally create a differentiated offering with true market value. Easy to say, but the trick here is to make sure you really are looking for customers’ needs — not just convincing yourself that customers need what you, or everyone else, want to make.

* Pursue a long-term strategy. In an effective strategy, short-term moves should be leading you toward a desired outcome in the long term. A collection of opportunistic bets, no matter how sure they seem in the moment, is not a strategy. Would any solid personal financial plan have advocated liquidating mutual and bond funds to bet the farm on Facebook?

* Don’t follow the herd. We’re all human, and there’s emotional comfort in doing what everyone else is doing. Recognize that feeling — and then make sure that you’re not letting it cloud your judgment. Be vigilant and actually evaluate each investment opportunity on its merits, not on its media profile.

These are great pieces of advice, but as I already alluded to, this type of thinking is more common sense, and probably not even remotely typical of savvy investors. Most people who play the stock market don’t expect to invest $10,000 one day and have $35,000 appear the next day; it’s not a get rich quick scheme.

Investments guru, Mark Cuban explained what he thought about the Facebook IPO, but it wasn’t an abysmal assessment as one might expect. He purchased huge amounts of Facebook shares as well, and he believes it was a wise investment.

His first point was to say that big investors always exploit stupidity on the market, because they know it always works. Essentially, financial firms use disinformation to manipulate market behavior. Experts predicted the Facebook IPO would have one of the biggest small investor turnouts in history, and it did. Big banks and Nasdaq hyped the hell out of it.

Mark Cuban comments on the Facebook IPO and shares of the company:

“Can you imagine how pissed you would be if you bought a boatload of Facebook thinking you got in at a better than IPO price only to watch the price on the open market post IPO drop below the price you paid in the private market ? Ouch.”

“The law of unintended consequences is that the dynamics for how private companies are valued and are able to raise Pre IPO rounds could quickly change if the prices and volumes on SecondMarket and its competitors declined significantly.”

“Valuation has no relevance what so ever. Conventional wisdom says the buyers of stocks will try to determine the value of a stock before they buy or sell and make the appropriate rational decision. Not even in a Richie Rich cartoon does that happen.”

“Bottom line, if you think mobile will displace online usage from PCs then you should immediately short Google and other ad plays and buy TV stations and networks. If you can’t buy an ad effectively on mobile and no one is using a PC to connect to the internet any more, then the only way to reach an audience is going to be via good old tv. And all that over the top video noise, forgettabout it.”

Cuban purchased a boatload of Facebook shares himself, but again, it’s not his only investment, and he’s not expecting all the return on his investments a week later. He believes it could end up being a valuable investment, but not because everyone he knows uses it.

If you are letting the availability of information already in your head replace good old fashion research, you’re selling yourself short. If you follow the herd when it comes to investing, you are probably headed where most herds end up. At the slaughterhouse.

It’s good to take calculated risks, but not blind leaps. Facebook may yet prove to be a valuable investment, but like all good things, it doesn’t happen overnight. Also, when prices are low, like Facebook shares are right now, it’s the time to buy, especially if you can afford the gamble.

According to what an inside source told the New York Times, Facebook intends to file a motion to consolidate all of the lawsuits regarding the IPO. They also plan to pass some of the blame off on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Facebook’s lead underwriters, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, plan to join the social networking site in this motion.

Despite very poor stock performance since the day of the IPO, Facebook and the Nasdaq considerer the IPO a success, but obviously can’t deny it is not without its faults.

So while we wait to see what the lawsuits will bring, Facebook hasn’t been slacking. Just days after the IPO they continued their global expansion plans opening a new office in Dubai committed to serving advertising demands in the Middle East and North Africa.

Facebook also took action to address their shortcomings in the mobile advertising arena and made some much needed refinements to the platform. Even more important, ComScore released a new study that supports Facebook’s advertising model, claiming that exposure to branded advertising does indeed result in a significant lift when it comes time for consumers to purchase.

Also noteworthy, Facebook just took on a several interns and hired some new talent. In fact, it looks like they just filled about 25 positions and are still hiring. Inside Facebook published a list of new hires and another list featuring all the positions which have been taken down from their careers website, presumably already filled.

So it seems like things are going as expected for Facebook despite the slew of lawsuits and ongoing investigations. We’ll keep you informed as news becomes available about the IPO lawsuits and whatever else pops up.

UBS was one of the investors who was effected by the glitch. The problem is, they lost over $350 million on the deal. It stems from Nasdaq’s failure to confirm their Facebook trades. Originally they wanted a million shares, but after not getting confirmation, they repeatedly entered their order. Of course, in the end, they ended up with far too many shares–one million for each time they entered their order.

According to CNBC, UBS is preparing a lawsuit against the Nasdaq for damages stemming from glitch. Officially UBS doesn’t disclose their losses until the end of a financial quarter. They also say they are exploring other options for recouping the funds.

UBS comments on the loses incurred from Nasdaq trading during Facebook’s IPO launch:

“Consistent with our policy on market comments on our positions or intra-quarter performance, we are not disclosing the amount of the loss, which is not material to UBS,”

“We are continuing to consider avenues to recover our losses in this matter, but have not yet taken legal action.”

Yesterday, the compensation plan devised by Nasdaq was met with huge criticism by big investors who called it a scam and an attempt to turn a confidence eroding event into a competitive advantage. Of course, by now you probably know this is not the first party to take legal action against the Nasdaq for the computer glitch.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens with all this hubbub caused by the glitch, but I’m not sure the courts will find Nasdaq responsible. I would have thought issues like UBS experienced would have been dealt with by the end of the first day of trading on May 18th. I guess progress is slow. We’ll keep you posted.