Quirky IPOs and Rogue Brokers

Good IPOs.

Yesterday's signs-of-the-times initial public offerings not only priced at the top of their ranges, they also traded nicely in the aftermarket. Etsy priced at $16, opened at $31, and closed at $30, suggesting that its somewhat odd distribution mechanism -- selling lots of shares to retail investors in very small (fine yes hand-crafted artisanal bespoke etc.) batches, and lots of other shares concentrated "among a smaller number of institutional investors than is typical in IPOs" (fine yes thoughtful investors who discover and buy unique shares and build relationships with the company that sold them) -- left a lot of money on the table. But fine yes it's a quirky twee IPO and it's not all about the money, it's about bringing joy to people everywhere. Actually there's something to that; Etsy is unusual in being a public B corporation, as Katie Benner has discussed here at Bloomberg View, which means that it answers to a higher authority than share price maximization. Also it's one of just two public companies headquartered in Brooklyn.