U.S. stocks fell, sending benchmark gauges down a sixth day, as Facebook Inc.’s debut failed to inspire optimism after its record initial public offering.

Stocks rose earlier today after Facebook’s record IPO made the social network more costly than almost every company in the S&P 500. Nasdaq had said it would start quoting Facebook at 10:45 a.m. New York time and begin trading of Facebook at about 11 a.m. It then delayed the open by five minutes before sending the notice that there was a problem. The shares started trading at 11:30 a.m.
Facebook sold 421.2 million shares at $38 each to raise $16 billion. That values the Menlo Park, California-based company at $104.2 billion, or 107 times trailing 12-month earnings, more than every S&P 500 member except Amazon.com Inc. and Equity Residential.