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		<img align="" alt="Snap shares fall 4% as filings show some investors bailing" class="imgCont" height="464" src="http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/img/article/2017-05/09/full/1494273612-2709.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #DDD; margin-right: 10px; padding: 1px; float: left; z-index: 0;" title="Snap shares fall 4% as filings show some investors bailing" width="620" />
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			Snap Inc stock rebounded on Monday from a record low hit earlier in a choppy trading session as big investors report their latest stakes in the beleaguered social media company and as a wave of employees became eligible to sell their shares.</div>
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			The shares were up 5.2 per cent at $12.44 in morning trading after falling as much as 4.7 per cent to $11.28 shortly after the market opened, their lowest point since their March debut.</div>
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			Within just 45 minutes of regular trading, volume had already reached half of the stock&#39;s daily average for the past 10 days.</div>
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			Starting on Monday, employees for the first time are allowed to sell their stock following the Snapchat parent&#39;s blockbuster initial public offering, potentially increasing the supply of shares in the market and their volatility.</div>
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			Monday is also the deadline for hedge funds and other institutional investors to report their quarter-end holdings of U.S. equities.</div>
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			Rowe Price Group Inc, a mutual fund manager that is Snap&#39;s fifth-largest shareholder, hiked its stake by about a third, according to filings on Monday. That comes after BlackRock Inc, the world&#39;s largest asset manager, and Coatue Management LLC, a hedge fund that is Snap&#39;s sixth-largest shareholder, also increased their stakes, recent filings said.</div>
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			Third Point LLC, Jana Partners and Temasek Holdings dissolved their stakes in Snap entirely, filings since Friday showed. Fidelity Investments, Snap&#39;s seventh-largest shareholder, said in filings last week that it cut its holdings by more than half, from more than 33 million shares to about 15 million.</div>
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			Trading sentiment in Snap&#39;s options leaned toward bullishness. Contracts betting on the shares&#39; rising above $14 by mid-September were the most actively traded for the company for the near term.</div>
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			Monday&#39;s stock rise follows a disappointing quarterly report from Snap last week that sent its shares down 14 per cent on Friday to a closing low of $11.83, far below its IPO price of $17.</div>
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			Snap has also been a target of short sellers, with 5.5 per cent of its shares outstanding shorted as of Thursday, according to Thomson Reuters data.</div>
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			The stock holds a higher-than-average likelihood of a short squeeze, where the price rises as short sellers rush to cover their bets, according to Starmine data.</div>
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			However, Ihor Dusaniswky, head of research at financial analytics firm S3 Partners in New York, said short-covering was not driving Monday&#39;s rally.</div>
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			&quot;There just isn&#39;t enough stock being covered in order to have an impact on today&#39;s stock price,&quot; Dusaniswky said.</div>
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			Wall Street is increasingly worried that Snap is succumbing to competition from Facebook Inc&#39;s Instagram.</div>
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			Instagram, which has adopted features from Snapchat, has 250 million daily active users, compared with Snapchat&#39;s 173 million at the end of the second quarter, fewer than Wall Street had expected.</div>
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			&quot;We remain on the sidelines until we see signs of re-acceleration in user growth, an inflection on Snap pricing... and/or get closer to the end of the lock-up expiration,&quot; Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Kip Paulson said in a research note on Monday, lowering his price target to $15 from $17.</div>
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			Snapchat is popular among people under 30 who like decorating their pictures with bunny faces and other filters.</div>
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			But following the IPO, investors have become more concerned that it might never become profitable.</div>
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			With Monday&#39;s lockup expiry, employees are allowed to sell hundreds of millions of their shares for the first time since Snap&#39;s $3.4 billion market debut in March, the largest U.S. IPO in years.</div>
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			That follows an expiry at the end of July on restrictions from early investors owning around 400 million shares.</div>
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			To try to reassure investors, Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel and co-founder Robert Murphy on Thursday committed to not sell any of their combined 422 million shares in 2017.</div>
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			Close to 800 million shares become eligible for trading on Monday, including Spiegel and Murphy&#39;s stakes, according to JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth.</div>
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Wall Street is increasingly worried that Snap is succumbing to competition from Instagram

Snap shares fall 4% as filings show some investors bailing

Snap shares wither more as filings show some investors bailing

Wall Street is increasingly worried that Snap is succumbing to competition from Instagram

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