[ale] Red Hat files for $96.6 million IPO

[Robert Butera]

On Sat, 5 Jun 1999, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

> Boy Howdy. This is going to get interesting... Wonder how I can get in
> on this deal...

This is a little off topic, but I will answer.

ETrade is listed as one of the two secondary underwriters.  Etrade
allows all account holders an "equal footing" in requesting shares for
an IPO.  They post an announcement saying they are now taking
"Statements of Interest" in an IPO, and those who express interest get
shares assigned to them (obviously you must already have the cash in
your account or they won't allocate them).  The "problem" with this
approach is that the "statement of interest" announcement could be
made at any time during the day, and they "close the door" when enough
people have expressed interest, typically about an hour after the
announcement!  So unless you want to sit on their annoucement page all
(I guess you could write a Perl script run by cron to look for the
annoucement!), it is actually really hard, even on Etrade, to get in.

The RedHat IPO may make writing such a script worth the effort :)  

This is not an endorsement of Etrade.  I have been with them since
1995 and find that their customer service reps have gone from dumb
to "so clueless they make mistakes they can't fix."  So use them 
with caution!  I have finally decided to punt them.


--
Robert Butera, Assistant Professor		robert.butera at ece.gatech.edu
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering		phone:	404-894-2935
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA USA	FAX:	404-894-5935

--
Robert Butera, Assistant Professor		robert.butera at ece.gatech.edu
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering		phone:	404-894-2935
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA USA	FAX:	404-894-5935