Facebook IPO Debacle Can Be Blamed On Venus, Financial Astrologist Says

Guys, remember that disastrous Facebook IPO? Well it wasn’t NASDAQ’s fault, okay? Or Morgan Stanley’s or even Facebook’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s.

You can blame the whole mess on Venus actually.

That’s right, Venus was in retrograde during the Facebook IPO. Apparently, this doomed the whole public offering, financial astrologist Edward Guthmann writes in the San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday.

“Here was Venus -- the goddess of love, the beauty and love principle -- moving backward in the sky,” writes Guthmann. “You want something moving forward, especially if you're launching an IPO or something important.”

Astrological portents aside, we now know that Facebook’s May 18 public debut was a total mess. As of Tuesday, the stock was down about 28 percent off its opening price of $38.

Facebook’s stock plunge cost ordinary investors up to $630 million, according to a Bloomberg report from late May, while Morgan Stanley and other IPO underwriters made about $100 million on the disaster, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Facebook is facing at least 13 lawsuits over its disastrous public offering. In one of the most recent suits, three shareholders allege that Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives withheld key information about the value of the company from mom-and-pop investors ahead of the debut.

Maybe in his defense, Zuckerberg should just blame it on the stars.