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Google IPO Swami

Posted by michael on from the GIGO dept.

The Google IPO Swami writes: "I'm running an experiment and Slashdot readers would be good contributors. As you may know, Google recently announced that they will be using a unique dutch auction structure to price shares of their IPO. Instead of having the underwriters determine the opening price, the price will be set by the demand of investors that register to participate. I'm interested in how well the public can estimate this demand and the price of the shares to be offered. I'm giving away free shares in Google to find out. The person that comes closest to estimating the opening and closing price of the stock on the IPO date will win shares in the company."

4 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Mike Hawk's guess by Mike+Hawk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess the price will be somewhere near $250 per share on the day of the IPO and down around $1.94 about 4 years later. Be careful when investing in those tech stocks, you can get seriously burned. But this is just a guess, IANACPA or investment advisor. YMMV, void where prohibited.

  2. I think the real question is... by chrispyman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    does this person really think that getting wild guesses from thousands of non-investor types will help him determine anything?

  3. Re:Abuse? by danharan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why should he care? He's just trying to figure out what a large number of people are willing to pay for Google shares, so he can game the auction.

    --
    Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
  4. You know, he's doing a bayesian survey by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just realized - he's doing a bayesian average!

    http://www.research.att.com/~volinsky/bma.html

    There was a possibly apochryphal story about this. A plane went down in a large area, and they needed to find it. Nobody really knew what happened to it. The leader of the search team went and asked a bunch of pilots where they thought the plane was, after giving them the course, heading, speed, and whatever data was available.

    Well, they took the answers, narrowed the search area, then found the plane pretty much where the consensus said it would be.

    A bit of thought will give you the reason this might have worked...