Stocks Will Try to Stop the Recent Bleeding

Will investors go bargain shopping today?

U.S. stocks are down for three straight weeks, and last week was really ugly: The Dow lost 3.5%, and with declines in 12 of the past 13 sessions, the blue chip index is riding its longest losing streak in 37 years!

The Nasdaq gave up 5.3% last week, and the S&P 500 fell 4.3%.

This morning, stock futures are indicating a solidly higher open.

Facebook (NYSE:FB) Friday turned into Facebook flop-day. There was a triple-whammy of errors for the Nasdaq in opening Facebook stock for the first time ever last week. First, Facebook shares started trading at 11:32 a.m. ET when they were supposed to open at 11:00 a.m.

Second, there were issues with placing and canceling orders. Some investors waited days until they received a status update on their orders.  In some cases, investors who tried to cancel orders wound up stuck with those trades at higher prices than they wanted to pay.

And third, Facebook shares gained just 23 cents on the day. The underwriters stepped in to support the stock, not letting it go below its IPO price of $38. While the initial trade was for $42.05 and Facebook briefly hit $45, it spent the rest of the day in the $38 range, ending at $38.23 for a 0.6% gain. For comparison, the nine other technology IPOs this year saw an average first-day gain of 25%, according to Dealogic.

Nasdaq CEO Bob Greifeld says he is embarrassed by the blunder, and the SEC is looking into what went wrong.

General Motors (NYSE:GM), meanwhile, has not only pulled its paid ads from Facebook, but also from the Super Bowl. The automaker says the investment just isn't worth it.  The Wall Street Journal reports that CBS, which is broadcasting February's game, is charging $3.8 million for 30 seconds of ad space, up from the $3.5 million NBC charged for the last game.

China's Dalian Wanda Group is buying the U.S.'s second biggest movie theater, AMC Entertainment, for $2.6 billion. The Chinese box office is on fire; last year, sales rose by 30%.