In this article, we analyze underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and holdings following offerings in Sweden. By exploiting a unique hand-collected data set with information on the ultimate holdings by institutional and individual investors, as well as boards of directors, we find, as most prior studies, that IPOs on average are underpriced. IPOs with low (high) initial return have higher (lower) holdings by individual investors. Institutional investors are, to a greater extent than individual investors, also able to identify underpriced firms.

This study examines individuals entering the stock market, “rookies.” The study uses unique ownership data, containing investor holdings of all listed Swedish firms over the sample period from 2004 to 2010, to examine rookies’ stock portfolios. In addition, this study explores investor sophistication among rookies, based on individual characteristics and portfolio composition. Although the average shareholder is aging and leaving the stock market, this study shows there are signs of rejuvenation, with rookies entering the stock market. The results show that the majority of rookies hold under-diversified stock portfolios and choose one large firm as their first stock market investment. Rookie characteristics display gender differences, in which the average female rookie has lower income, is older, but holds a larger stock portfolio than her male counterpart.

This paper analyzes new individual investors (rookies) and the importance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in attracting rookies to the stock market, which is an issue previous research has not focused on. The paperuses stock ownership records for publicly listed Swedish firms together with data on IPOs for the period2004–2010. We find the proportion of IPO investors among rookies to be larger than for non-rookies andthat rookies are more likely to invest in IPOs than non-rookies. Thus, IPOs appear to attract rookies to alarger extent than non-rookies. Moreover, rookies investing in IPOs have a higher income and hold largerstock portfolios, but they receive lower returns compared with other rookies. In addition, the results showthat even for rookies, sophisticated investors receive higher returns than less sophisticated investors.

This study uses the stock ownership records of Swedish firms and hand-collected Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) data to analyze the offer prices and underpricing of IPO shares and the relationship with the post-IPO ownership structure. The results show that for IPO stocks with low offer prices, individual investors hold a relatively large fraction of shares compared with IPO stocks with higher offer prices. Furthermore, for low-priced IPOs, there is a negative relationship between offer price and breadth of ownership, showing that stocks with a low price can attract more investors than stocks with higher offer prices. However, there is also a size effect, with breadth of ownership being higher for larger firms. Overall, this study shows that the offer price of an IPO firm may have a moderate effect on its post-IPO ownership structure.