The Facebook slide on Wall Street continued on Friday, as the company’s shares reached new lows a day after early investors became eligible to sell their shares on the market. Shares closed down more than 4 percent, to $19.05, after reaching a low of $19.00 during the day — 50 percent lower than its original offering price of $38 in May.

The company’s widely anticipated public debut seems to have been jinxed from the start, and for a variety of reasons, including technical problems on Nasdaq and slowing sales growth. Complicating its recovery is the prospect of about two billion shares that early investors and employees will be able to sell beginning this week and continuing through next May.

The first and smallest opening in that gate was Thursday, when about 271 million shares were eligible to be sold. The shares are held largely by early investors, like Accel Partners and Goldman Sachs. It is unclear whether they were sold Thursday; the transactions are likely to take some time.

But trading volume in the stock was high: 157 million shares, versus a 30-day average of 31 million.