|
Year of the Tiger performance review:
IPO picks
by Siu-Yee Ng
Out of our seven IPO alerts for 1998, only three actually made it out into the market. The rest remained in a safe holding pattern as the IPO market dried up in the aftermath of the 1998 late summer correction.
Given the nature of IPOs, it is hard to arrive at a realistic entry price if you’re an individual investor: Few mortals are able to get in at the offer. But the aftermarket provides ample opportunity to get in -- frequently at lower levels. Accordingly, you had a realistic chance to buy IPOs such as VINT and FOX at aftermarket levels of US$6.88 and US$19.38, respectively -- which by Dec. 31 1998 had gained 67% and 29%, respectively.
In late summer, when we were producing the Profits Perspectives 2000 video, I recommended EBAY, which at that time had not debuted yet. From its offer price of US$18, the stock zoomed 1,150%. If you got in at US$25.15 in October, you still made 794%. Taipan subscribers first received the recommendation during the November 1998 Taipan Annual Conference, when we officially released the video as a welcome gift to the attendees. Those who thought it worthwhile to join the Taipan team in Clearwater, Florida, were able to lock in a cool 100%.
This brought the average gains of Taipan’s IPO alert to 65.3%.
|
