Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
88 articles
A Draft Red Herring Prospectus is the detailed offer document a company files with SEBI before an IPO, containing restated financials, risk factors, litigation history and the intended use of funds. This article explains why it is called a draft, what SEBI does with it, and a practical order in which to read it.
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.
A Red Herring Prospectus is the document under which an IPO is actually offered to the public. It carries the dates, the bid lot and usually the price band, but not the final issue price, which is discovered only after bidding closes. This article explains what changes from the draft and what stays open.
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.
Two companies can run a public issue in the same week and end up on completely different platforms with different rulebooks. This article compares the mainboard with the SME platforms on who vets the offer, who qualifies to list, what a single lot costs, how liquid the share is afterwards, and what the retail reader is really taking on.
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.
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.
You tap apply, the broker says the bid was submitted, and the approval request never reaches your payments app. This guide walks a beginner through the five places a UPI mandate breaks, how to tell which one you hit from the screens you already have, and the habits that stop it happening again.
An Indian IPO is usually described in two parts: a fresh issue and an offer for sale. The two lines sit next to each other on the cover page but describe different transactions, with money flowing to different places. This article explains where the cash goes, what dilution means, and how to read a mixed issue.
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