Category Archives: The IPO Buzz

A handful of IPOs exploded in Friday’s market much like an eruption from a smoldering volcano. They scored an average opening-day gain of nearly 40 percent. But the event that led up to Friday’s fireworks didn’t just happen overnight.

 

Wall Street is getting ready for its own holiday rush, with the IPO calendar pointing to one of the busiest Decembers in five years.

It may have rained on Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but the sun was shining  on the IPO parade at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets.

 

The much heralded NYMEX Holdings (NYSE: NMX) IPO popped with an opening-day gain of 125.4 percent last Friday. Given the background of the IPO market over the last six months, moonshots over Manhattan have not been isolated happenings.

All you had to do was to look at the cover. We’re talking about the cover page of the prospectus for each of Friday’s four IPOs. Two went splat and two popped in the aftermarket.

 

This fall’s high-flying IPO market lost altitude last week and hit the runway without all its landing gear in place. By Friday’s close, three of six deals finished below their initial offering prices and the average aftermarket performance for all six was a minus 0.21 percent.

 

What do you get when you see an opening-day gain from a $20 billion IPO of 15 percent, a REIT popping for 13 percent and a deal from a troubled industrial sector gaining 18 percent? Maybe an IPO frenzy?

Bull markets are more fun.

 

In case you hadn’t noticed, the running of the IPO bulls started in mid-September. And this week looks to produce the biggest new-issues calendar since January.