NEW YORK (AP) -- Facebook's stock gained nearly 5 percent in value Wednesday.

Investors waded into the badly beaten-down stock after disclosure that CEO Mark Zuckerberg won't sell stock in the company for at least a year.

Zuckerberg holds about 504 million shares and options and had been eligible to start selling them in November. The company currently has about 692 million shares eligible for sale. The concern is that if Zuckerberg floods the market with additional shares, prices would go down further.

The stock is still trading at less than half of the $38 that it went for in Facebook's May initial public offering. It gained 85 cents, or 4.8 percent, to close at $18.58. That more than wiped out Tuesday's loss, during which the stock hit an all-time low of $17.55. It had closed at $17.73.

Since the IPO, Facebook's stock has been down on 45 trading days, up on 29 and unchanged on two.