Never Trade The Opening

The news on Pfizer was very well publicized this morning before the opening of trading on the NYSE. The stock opened at $23.50 the low for the day and traded 288 million shares. It closed 6% higher at $24.90. People from Europe and Asia who went home left a market sell on the opening order for the specialist on NYSE. On days like this the market will almost always take the reckless market orders who are not more patient and give them the worst price....same applies to buy orders....

So far this year there have been 172 IPO's worth $40.9 billion on the NYSE compared with 249 IPOs worth $50.8 billion on the London stock exchanges. In 2004 there were 233 IPOs worth $50.3 billion in NYSE, compared with 224 worth $11.6 billion in London. Two things: 1) The action is outside the USA again this year....focus on great growth stories outside the USA. The largest offerings of the year have all been in China. 2) The USA is now a very expensive place to do business. The smart money is listing outside the USA for better deals and more flexibility.

The opening trades for IPO's are different to an already listed company. Google opened at $100 and never looked back!

Barkly seen here takes this all in stride. Emotional trading and investing (buying or selling on the openings) is not something he is interested in.