Truett-Hurst Shares Down Amid Tough Stock Market

Launching an IPO on the day that the stock markets in general had their worst day of the year just sucks. No question.

The Dow, S&P and Nasdaq all lost 2.3% to 2.5% of value on the day that Truett-Hurst shares started trading. One Helluva “welcome to the neighborhood” sucker punch.

THST closed down 5.5% after recovering from an 11% loss early on. The trading was relatively light — just under 170K shares — and it looks like market-makers did their job in helping sustain the price.

But, make no mistake, it was a lousy day for a debut, but the shares hung in there.

And if the price holds up, it could be an interesting — if long and frustrating — validation of the OpenIPO auction pricing concept which tries to maximize returns to the company by avoiding huge IPO first day run-ups.