Baltimore Firm Delays IPO to Wait Out Risk - washingtonpost.com

Having just done IPOs in class, this was of special interest.

Baltimore Firm Delays IPO to Wait Out Risk - washingtonpost.com:

"When Grand Canyon Education of Phoenix went public Thursday, it was the first U.S. company to have an initial stock offering since Aug. 8. On that day, Rackspace Hosting of San Antonio broke the longest IPO dry spell since 1975....Since August, at least 29 companies have canceled or postponed their offerings on U.S. markets, according to Reuters."

Jay Ritter has a fascinating look at IPOs by each month from 1960 to 2005. It is a spreadsheet and not labeled but the columns are month, year, average first day return for the month's IPO, and number of IPOs that month. From that data:

Jan		21.94	19.04348
Feb		21.38	24.73913
Mar		19.80	28.28261
Apr		22.00	26.45652
May		18.85	29.17391
Jun		17.03	33.36957
Jul		14.15	28.58696
Aug		14.59	27.78261
Sep		17.32	23.23913
Oct		11.64	31.28261
Nov		17.36	30.84783
Dec		17.10	29.58696
Grand Average		17.74	27.69928