As Levitt Lectures About IPO Dangers, VA Linux Skyrockets

Americans may be smitten by the romanticism of stock trading, but Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt warned Thursday that one of the biggest financial dangers they should avoid has three letters: I-P-O.

Levitt issued the warning at Columbia University while 8 miles south near Wall Street, yet another IPO, VA Linux, was shooting skyward, selling at more than 700% of its initial offering price by midday.

Many individual investors in securities markets have neither the experience nor the information to navigate the complexities of volatile IPOs, Levitt told several hundred people gathered in Manhattan. ...