ITWire

In my opinion, the shares will finally be priced at around $40, giving the company an initial valuation of almost $110B. Due to the pent-up demand from (in my opinion, irrational) small investors, the price will be pushed up as high as $55 in launch-day trading.

And that will be the highest it ever trades.

As growth slows, as users drift away to other interests, as the world slowly realises that a valuation of over $200 per active user can never be realised, the share price will enter a steady decline, much like those of Zynga and Groupon which are both trading at a little over half their float price.

Of course the final insult will occur when Facebook returns to the market to raise more capital and is forced to value the shares against a market capitalisation closer to $40B than $100B.

The final thing to remember is that Warren Buffett will take no part in the IPO. He observed, "Anytime you get a truly extraordinary business — and it's obvious it's an extraordinary business — they're the hardest ones to value because the question is, is whether five or 10 years from now that they will be as extraordinary as they are now."

Buffett continued, "I think the worst mistake you can make in stocks is to buy or sell based on current headlines."

Enough said.

I'm happy to be proven wrong in all of this, but I fear I am not. Only time will tell.