What does an IPO's first day of trading tell investors?

— -- Q: How important is an IPO's first day of trading for longer-term investors?

A: The first day of an initial public offering gets lots of attention.

The splash from the debut of a brand-new stock on the market is hard to resist. Investors, who have been longing to buy a stock when it was private for years, might pile into shares when they first start trading. Similarly, investors who might get shares of a lagging IPO can't wait to dump them.

But do these first day pops, or losses, really tell investors about the IPOs going forward? The answer this year has been yes, according to an analysis by Daniel Horn, a data analyst at the software company Tableau Software.

By analyzing the nearly 100 IPOs this year, Horn found that just three of these recent IPOs have seen their IPOs turn positive after a negative first day.

Clearly, this isn't the kind of data investors can bank on. There's no shortage of IPOs that had a strong first day that investors ultimately lost lots of money on, including dot-com flameouts like theGlobe and VA Linux. But in the short and intermediate term, investors at least recently seem to be taking a bit of a cue from the first day.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies and Fundamental Analysis for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz