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Are there common stock price trends related to employee option plans?
The stock market is generally a long term investment platform.  The share prices reflect more the companies potential to be profitable in the future rather than its actual value.  Companies that have good potential can over perform their actual value.  We saw this regularly  in the early days of the internet prior to the .com bust.  Companies would go up exponentially based on their idea's and potential.  Investors learned from that and are demanding more these days.  As a result companies that do not show growth potential go down. Companies that show growth and potential (apple and google for 2 easy examples) continue to go up.   Many companies have specific days where employees can buy and sell stocks.  there are minor ripples in the market on these days as the demand and supply are temporarily altered by a large segment of the owner base making trades.  For this reason some companies have a closed pool that is only open to inside trades that then executes the orders over time so that the effect is minimized on the actual stock price.  This is not happening with face book.  Instead many of the investors are dumping their stock directly into the market.  These are savvy investors and if there was potential for profit remaining you would not see the full scale exodus from the stock.  The fact that it is visible is scaring off investors itself.  I can not think of another instance that has gone like facebook, especially one that was called so accurately by many industry pundits.