Adventures in IPO Land October 4, 2000February 15, 2017 Pieter Lessing: “I thought you might enjoy this investing adventure I had. I was between Las Vegas junkets and had an itch that had to be scratched . . . so off to IPO land I went, with redherring.com as my trusty companion. Here are some of the IPOs I “evaluated” — ARTD, CALD, DDIC, EEEE, ETIN, INSN, NETP, OPU, RVSN. Today, most are trading near all time lows – down about 80% on average from their highs. The stars were: Radvision (RVSN), down ‘only’ 57% and Insilicon Corp (INSN) – down a ‘mere’ 37%. The superstar (exception that proves the rule??), DDI Corp (DDIC) IPO’ed at $14 and is now trading at $45 1/2. “Well, I bought only one of the IPOs above. Can you guess which one? . . . suspense . . . drum roll . . . No, you guessed wrong — I bought DDIC! Genius, huh? Well, I have to confess — I put in buy orders for all of them, but my broker always said: ‘Sorry, too popular, you didn’t get any.’ Except with DDIC. Nobody wanted it, so I got it.” ☞ Thanks, Pieter. There is definitely a lesson in there someplace. Meanwhile, two suspect comments on last Thursday’s Cooking Like a Guy™ Recipe #6 (stale bread): Craig Furnas: “Microwave ovens are a fabulous way to de-stale rubbery tortilla chips.” ☞ So you say. Parks Stewart: “Knave, knave! Every bona fide single guy knows that reviving pizza (after you peel it from the coffee table where your friends left it during the party the night before) is an advanced two-step heating process. To wit: 1) Set the oven to 350º. 2) Sprinkle some water on the pizza. 3) Wet a paper towel and completely cover the pizza. 4) Nuke all this about a minute and a half (on high, of course — is there any other setting?). 5) By now the oven is hot enough (the temperature setting was just for show) for you to put the pizza on foil (or not) for a minute or two to recrisp the various parts that really need to be crisp, as opposed to the whole thing being crisp when you started this endeavor.” ☞ You are on very thin Guy ice when you begin setting forth five-step recipes. But to revive a slice of pizza, it just might be worth it.