The Most Successful IPOs this Year?

Groupon is down by more than 80% from it's IPO price in roughly 10 months while Facebook is only down by 50% in about 3 months. 

Of course, you have been warned many times on this blog not to participate in the IPO of these two laggards, and while I am myself surprised by the speed at which the reality took place, it's the way of the markets to be difficult to predict.

In the markets, success if all relative: the gains of one are the losses of another.

Just as a reminder, let me explain what an IPO is: an IPO — or initial public offering — is the mean for current investors of a private company to get out of their investment by selling it to the broader public. It's also a way for a company to raise funds by selling stocks. So this means that the higher the IPO price, and better for these stakeholders, and the more overvalued the IPO price, the more profitable and successful the process has been. Whoever participates in an IPO and is not aware of these facts is a fool.

In the particular case of Facebook and Groupon, one can say that the underwriters managed to sell at an enormous premium, the share of those companies — remember, companies which do not make any profit. And hence, these are probably the most successful IPOs from the perspectives of the underwriters who gets a percentage of the IPO value, and the insiders, who sold at a massively inflated price.