Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
61 articles
A book-built IPO opens with two numbers rather than one: a floor price and a cap price. This article explains what each end of the band means, why the corridor exists, how bids and the cut-off option feed a demand book, and why the final allotment price always lands inside the band.
Every IPO subscription figure is one division: shares bidders asked for, divided by shares offered to that group. This guide unpacks what sits in each half of that fraction, why the category rows must be read separately, how demand builds across bidding days, and which readings of the table are simply wrong.
Between the moment bidding closes and the day a stock lists, a registrar has to match millions of bids against bank confirmations, throw out the ones that fail, allocate what is left bucket by bucket, and run a draw of lots where retail demand exceeds supply. This is what happens in those few days.
Going public is a financing choice with strings attached. Companies list to fund expansion without repayment obligations, to reduce borrowings, to let founders and early investors sell, to pay for acquisitions in shares and to make employee stock realisable. This article explains each motive and the permanent costs that come with a listing.
An IPO application form will not accept a request for 37 shares. Bids move in fixed bundles called lots, and that single design choice shapes the minimum cheque you write, the category you fall into, and whether an oversubscribed issue treats you as a lottery ticket or a proportion.
A few days after an IPO closes, the registrar files a document called the Basis of Allotment. It is short, unglamorous and the only official explanation of why you received one lot, three lots or nothing at all. This guide walks through its tables column by column and shows how to trace a single application through them.
An IPO allotment result is produced by the issue registrar and then mirrored by exchanges, brokers, depositories and banks. This guide explains the identifiers you need, the three practical routes for checking, what each possible result means, and why a blank search often has nothing to do with rejection.
Issue size is the number of shares an IPO offers multiplied by the issue price — the total value of the stock on sale, and not the company's valuation. This article separates the fresh-issue and offer-for-sale halves, shows where the money from each actually lands, and explains why a large issue and a small one behave differently under the same demand.
In an Indian public issue your application money never leaves your bank account, so a refund today means the release of a block rather than the return of a payment. This guide traces where the money sits, how partial allotment is settled, what normally delays a release, and how to escalate when it does not move.
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