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Facebook investors hoping for a tangible marker of their ownership stake are out of luck. The company won’t be offering paper stock certificates, despite earlier indications that it planned to make them available.

The operators of two stock-sale websites, OneShare.com and GiveAShare.com, said they learned of Facebook’s change of heart late last week. Computershare, which handles Facebook’s shareholder records, contacted them to say no paper stock certificates would be forthcoming.

"It was a complete surprise, given that they had it in their IPO filing," says Rick Roman, the founder of GiveAShare.com. Facebook’s IPO documents include a mock-up of its planned stock certificate.

Both Facebook () and Computershare declined to comment on the reversal.

Facebook joins a growing number of companies that no longer issue paper stock certificates. Regulatory changes over the past decade have made it easier to go all-digital, which is generally cheaper and more convenient for both companies and their shareholders. The "no paper" list now includes major tech companies like Apple, Intel (, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (, Fortune 500), which ditched its paper certificates last month.

Related story: How to buy 1 share of Facebook stock

Going paperless is more efficient, but it’s a bummer for fans of the iconic certificates. They’ve become collector’s items that are sometimes worth more than the stock itself. A share of Apple (, Fortune 500) currently sells for around $560, but on Scripophily.com, a website that deals in old certificates, a 1998 Apple stock certificate will set you back $695.

Facebook’s digital-only move was a frustrating curveball for sites that specialize in selling single stock shares to collectors and brand fans. IPO-day demand for Facebook shares was intense, they say.

"We got more orders in a couple of hours than we do for the whole Christmas season," Roman says of Friday’s sales rush.

"It was huge," says OneShare.com CEO Lance Lee. "The last time we had a day that big was when Pixar was bought by Disney. For all the fans of Pixar, it was the last chance to get the stock certificate."

With Facebook, both OneShare and GiveAShare switched gears quickly. They came up with placeholders to offer buyers and adjusted their listings to make it clear exactly what customers would be getting.

GiveAShare.com plans to issue a keepsake certificate facsimile, along with a statement from Facebook’s transfer agent showing the customer’s account number and their official single-share holding. OneShare.com is creating a "statement of ownership," free of any legally problematic trademarks or logos. It’s a plan the company’s securities lawyers signed off on, Lee says.

"On the plus side, I think it’s going to be more visually interesting," Lee says. "On the negative side, it’s not the official stock certificate. We’re calling it a symbolic certificate."

It’s a tactic he’s resigned — reluctantly — to having to use again as more companies go the digital-only route.

"I’m hoping they’ll change their mind," Lee says of Facebook. "Look at it another way: You have a group of people that are buying your stock and never plan on selling it. These people don’t see themselves as customers. They see themselves as part-owners." 

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Facebook’s stock market debut finally came and went — but for all the breathless hype, shares ended right near their offering price.

On Thursday night, Facebook () set its final IPO price at $38 a share. When the stock began trading at 11:30 a.m. ET on Friday, the first trade came in at $42.05 per share — a gain of nearly 11%.

What is an IPO?

But the stock quickly reversed course, dropping down to hover right around the $38 IPO price for much of midday trading. Though shares rose modestly for short bursts of time throughout the day, they ended the session at $38.23.

While the price itself didn’t move much, trading was fast and intense. More than 80 million shares changed hands in the first 30 seconds of trading. By the end of the day, volume had spiked to around 567 million shares.

That easily set a new volume record for IPOs, smashing the previous record that automaker General Motors (, Fortune 500) set in 2010 with trading of around 450 million shares.

Facebook’s trading had been expected to start around 11 a.m. ET, but the opening was delayed.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell remotely, from the company’s headquarters in California. Facebook celebrated its public debut by gathering its staff Thursday night for an all-night hackathon.

At the $38 IPO price, Facebook is on track to raise $16 billion — making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa (, Fortune 500) in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker GM in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

Underwriters have the option to purchase an extra 63.2 million shares to cover any so-called over-allotments for excess demand. If that happens, Facebook will sell 484.4 million shares in total. That would bring the amount raised to $18.4 billion.

How much Facebook is worth: At $38 per share, Facebook’s market capitalization would be around $81 billion on IPO day.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Among all global companies, Facebook has the third-highest IPO-day valuation in history, according to data from DealLogic.

SecondMarket, an exchange on which people can buy and sell stock in private companies, posted data on Friday about Facebook’s private-trading history.

It wasn’t until 2010 that SecondMarket’s Facebook trades racked up significant volume, so Facebook’s trades before that tended to be one-off deals at a low per-share price. In April 2010, Facebook fetched an average price of $9.82 per share on a monthly average basis. One year later, the rate jumped to $31.46.

As of April 5, Facebook shares were trading for an average of $42.72 each — nearly $4 higher than the IPO price.

Who’s selling shares: Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will still hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion at the IPO price.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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The credit rating on Greece’s government debt was downgraded deeper into junk bond territory on Thursday.

Fitch Ratings cited the increased risk that Greece, operating now with a caretaker government, could be forced to leave the eurozone following more elections next month.

An exit from the eurozone would be "probable" if the elections fail to produce a government willing to stand by earlier austerity agreements reached with eurozone leaders, Fitch said.

In turn, the country’s departure from the eurozone would "result in widespread default on private sector as well as sovereign euro-denominated obligations," the ratings agency said. (Moody’s downgrades Spanish regions)

And all 16 other countries in the eurozone could be dinged.

"Fitch would place all eurozone sovereign ratings on Rating Watch Negative following the Greek elections if Fitch assesses that the risk of a Greek exit from [the eurozone] is probable in the near term," the agency said.

Fitch said the other nations’ economies would be hurt if Greece dropped the common currency, and that a continuation of the euro is a basic tenet of its debt ratings on of all the countries using the euro.

The bailout and debt restructuring for Greece approved by the so-called troika — the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — required the Greek parliament to approve an austerity program of cuts in government spending and benefits.

But the austerity plan sparked backlash, and on May 6 Greek voters denied a majority in Parliament to the two-party ruling coalition that had agreed to the bailout deal.

Polls show that an anti-austerity party is poised to be the top vote getter in the next round of voting, although it is not as clear it will be able to form a ruling coalition of its own. A deadlock could leave Greece without a working parliament able to pass the additional cuts required by the troika.

European leaders said Wednesday they want Greece to remain in the eurozone, but that it must move ahead with its agreed upon austerity plan.

The increased risk that Greece might leave the euro has driven many Greeks to withdraw money from the banks this week. The weakened state of the nation’s banks prompted the ECB to halt some loans to some of the Greek banks, forcing the banks to turn to more expensive assistance from the National Bank of Greece. 

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If you thought the "SUV craze" was over, you’re wrong. Very wrong. Market share for SUVs in recent months is the largest it has ever been.

During the height of the so-called "SUV craze" in the late 1990s and early 2000s, about one in five vehicles sold in America was an SUV. Today, in an era of near $4 gasoline and heightened environmental awareness, nearly one in three vehicles sold is an SUV.

Far from becoming forgotten relics of our misguided past, SUVs have survived and prospered by adapting to changing consumer tastes.

A decade ago, SUV buyers climbed up into huge vehicles that were, essentially, heavily modified trucks designed to excel in off-road driving and for hauling heavy trailers. They got terrible fuel economy and, with their tendency to tip over, they were dangerous, as well.

Today, big truck-based vehicles make up a tiny sliver of the SUV market. Ninety percent of the SUVs sold are mid-sized or smaller and the vast majority have nothing to do with trucks. These are high-riding cars. Most are front-wheel-drive, or if they’re not, they’re all-wheel-drive.

Electronic stability control, now required by law on all vehicles, has greatly reduced rollover risk in SUVs. ESC systems can help prevent a vehicle from skidding or tipping over during abrupt maneuvers.

Many of these new SUVs get fuel economy that’s as good or better than passenger cars sold just a few years ago. General Motors’ (, Fortune 500) new Chevrolet Equinox SUV, for instance, gets better combined city and highway mileage than a 4-cylinder 2010 Honda Accord.

Finally, on-road handling and performance is actually a selling point for many of these new, smaller vehicles. That’s made possible by lighter weight construction, more sophisticated suspension systems, and some serious compromises. Any notion drivers of these vehicles may have of serious off-road use must be put aside.

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When Ford Motor Co (, Fortune 500). was creating its new Explorer SUV, the automaker decided to use a car-based design shared with the Taurus sedan rather than the truck-based engineering used in previous generations. Ford’s customer research showed that, despite the old Explorer’s vaunted off-road capabilities, very few Explorer owners ever ventured far from paved streets.

Once the new car-based design was introduced, Explorer sales nearly tripled, according to data from J.D. Power and Associates.

As the downsides of SUV ownership dwindle with improved fuel economy, ride quality and handling, more consumers are switching out minivans and cars, said Jeff Schuster, an industry analyst with the consulting firm LMC Automotive. The attraction, as it has always been, is that SUVs offer the cargo space and flexibility of minivans and wagons but with an added dash of excitement.

"It’s rejuvenated the image of the multi-purpose vehicle," he said.

The biggest growth, however, has been among small SUVs like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and the new Mazda CX-5.

"For all intents and purposes, we’re sold out," Mazda spokesman Jeremy Barnes said of the CX-5.

Overall marketshare for small SUVs has more than doubled over the past seven years, said Ford sales analyst Erich Merkle. Today, they represent 45% of all SUVs sold. One reason is just that there are so many more small SUVs to choose from.

Besides providing more options, that variety actually generates more interest from consumers, said Schuster. Buyers who would have never considered an SUV before are looking now because they’re confident they’ll find something they like.

Small and mid-sized SUVs are attracting both the older and younger buyers for different reasons.

Older buyers are trading down into smaller SUVs as their kids leave home and they no longer need the space the larger vehicles offered, said Schuster.

Also, older drivers like having vehicles that they can get in and out of easily, said Merkle. SUVs, with their high seating, are easier to gracefully enter and exit than ordinary cars with seats down near ground level.

Younger buyers like the new smaller SUVs’ cool looks and the fact they’re clearly distinct from anything Mom and Dad ever drove.

"Nobody wants to drive what their parents drove," said Mazda’s Barnes. 

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South Korean companies

A U.K. factory index fell more than economists forecast in April and U.S. manufacturing probably slowed as the world economy stayed reliant on China to drive economic growth.

The gauge of British factory output dropped to 50.5 from 51.9 in March, London-based Markit Economics said today. The median forecast of 27 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a decline to 51.5. The Institute for Supply Management

Swedish truck maker AB Volvo said Thursday that higher costs contributed to a 2 percent drop in profits in the first quarter even though a buoyant performance in North America helped it record its strongest-ever sales for the period.

The sales performance impressed investors and the company’s share price spiked 5 percent to 94.10 kronor ($13.97) in early market trading on the Stockholm stock exchange.

The Goteborg-headquartered group recorded a net profit of 4.01 billion kronor ($595 million) for the first three months of the year, down slightly from the 4.08 billion kronor earned in the same period a year earlier. Costs, and especially those linked to research and development, dragged the bottom-line figure down compared with last year.

However, revenues jumped 10 percent to 78.84 billion kronor however _ the highest Volvo has ever recorded during a first quarter. They were boosted primarily by sales in the company’s key truck unit in North America. The trend in Europe stayed more or less unchanged from the previous year after a fall in demand in the fourth quarter, it said.

CEO Olof Persson said his company “showed its strength in being a global operation, when setbacks in some of our important markets were offset by positive developments in other markets.”

He also said that Volvo will keep investing in growth markets “by developing new products and further strengthening the sales and service networks.”

Volvo appeared a bit more optimistic about the European outlook as it revealed plans to ramp up production and raised its forecast for the heavy-duty truck market. It now expects an order intake of 230,000 trucks in 2012.

The forecast for North America remained unchanged, while production will be reduced in South America in May and June as the market switches over, and adapts to stricter emission requirements.

“We anticipate the demand will rise again in the second half of the year,” Persson said, noting the full-year forecast for Brazil therefore remains unchanged.

The outlook for Japan was also kept unchanged.

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European Central Bank officials led by President Mario Draghi resisted calls from the International Monetary Fund and U.S. Treasury to do more to stem the debt crisis roiling the euro-area economy.

As talks of global finance chiefs ended yesterday in Washington, euro-area central bankers from Draghi to Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann argued they have done enough by cutting interest rates and issuing more long-term bank loans.

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