WSJ.com - Google Shares Prove Big Winners -- For a Day

WSJ.com - Google Shares Prove Big Winners -- For a Day "Investors who went through the cumbersome auction for Google Inc. shares were feeling particularly lucky yesterday.
The countdown to Google's initial public offering of stock was filled with confusion, frustration and miscues. The first day of trading was no different. But shares of the Internet search-engine company proved to be big winners, at least for a day.
The stock closed at $100.34 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, up 18% from the reduced $85-a-share IPO price in heavy trading -- some 22 million shares traded, which was more than the 19.6 million shares sold. While some of the gain can be chalked up to the fact that the projected offering price had been reduced in the days leading up to the IPO, it still was an impressive price "pop," especially in a dreary IPO market and in the midst of another down day for the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index."

It'll be interesting to see what happens to GOOG today. I no longer see clearly discernible correlations between short-term stock market valuations and company potential (and haven't for several years...), so I think this is basically a gambling case study.