Choosing great IPOs

Floats have got bigger and more foreign companies are listing. It is not uncommon to hear some investors declare they won’t be investing in initial public offerings (IPOs) because they supposedly have higher risk. Headlines such as “Investors grow nervous as floats start to sink” perpetuate this view. Yet robust returns on IPOs suggest the exact opposite. If you had invested the same amount in every IPO on ASX last year, the return would have been 23 per cent by year’s end, which easily outstrips the total return for the S&P/ASX 300 over the same time, of negative 1.87 per cent. The longer-term returns for IPOs are even more telling. Over the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, investing in all IPOs would have returned an average of 14.8 per cent at the end of the first trading day, 14.5 per cent at the end of the first month and 15.6 per cent after three months... (VIEW LINK)