Alibaba And The Long-Run Performance Of Large Company IPOs

In May, I posted a column after Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. filed to go public in the United States showing that Chinese companies going public in the U.S. have historically been lousy long-run investments. I reported that, on average, investors who bought in the open market on the first day of trading and held on for three years underperformed U.S. stocks by 27%, about 9% per year.  But there are other ways to slice the data, too.