At IPO Prophet, we often emphasize the first few days of trading—not because that’s where the story ends, but because that’s where institutional intent and structural supply-demand dynamics are revealed. Early trading behavior is a stress test for appetite. But the question remains: how predictive is early strength?
To explore this, I pulled the top ten IPOs since 2012 ranked by 15-day price appreciation, and tracked their performance over the first 200 trading days, using normalized prices with Day 1 set to 100. These were all substantial offerings—each raising over $100 million on either the NYSE or Nasdaq.
The result is a clear reminder of how rare it is for early momentum to translate into long-term outperformance.
The chart below shows the normalized price paths of the top ten IPOs ranked by 15-day performance. Each line starts at 100 on the day of the IPO and tracks daily closing prices for the next 200 trading days. The spread in outcomes—particularly beyond the first 50 days—is striking.
Upstart Holdings (UPST) is the obvious outlier. After more than doubling in its first two weeks, the stock never looked back—compounding to a 13x return within 200 days. That performance is less about IPO mechanics and more about narrative alignment: in late 2020, anything AI-adjacent with a fintech wrapper was finding a bid. Still, the path was volatile. It was not a straight line, and conviction was required to hold.
Jumia (JMIA), another top performer at the outset, initially surged to a 4x return, only to unwind sharply after Day 100. That pattern—of early excitement followed by disillusionment—is repeated across several names in the group.
Others like HUYA, MAX, and TWLO showed more stability but never approached UPST’s trajectory. And for several—including SGTX and ALVR—early gains quickly reverted, possibly reflecting biotech’s binary nature and sector-specific risks. What emerges is a familiar truth: strong early performance does not guarantee structural quality or investor follow-through. In fact, if you simply bought the top 15-day performers as a portfolio, your median experience would likely be a round trip—possibly with a lot of pain in between.
From a structural lens, this tells us that the first 15 days measure enthusiasm. The next 185 days test conviction.
We’ll continue tracking names like CRCL and CRWV, which are currently showing some of the strongest post-IPO momentum we've seen in years. Whether they follow the UPST playbook or slip into the JMIA/SGTX pattern remains to be seen—but the chart above gives us a framework for how rare sustained strength really is.
If the past is any guide, most IPOs that burn this hot tend to cool. The ones that don’t tend to rewrite the rules