Just went back through some old market notes from 2010 and noticed something interesting about that year's IPO class. The market was pretty sluggish back then - we're talking less than 100 deals compared to the 300-400 we'd see in boom years. A lot of companies that wanted to go public just couldn't pull it off because bankers weren't touching anything with market uncertainty hanging over everything.

But here's what caught my attention: despite the rough conditions, some of those 2010 IPOs that actually made it through absolutely crushed it. We're talking +50%, +100%, even +200% gains from their offering prices. The wild part? Most of them didn't pop immediately. They came out of the gate quietly and only started moving weeks or months later.

Take Motricity - solid company riding the mobile software wave. Trading around $7.50 in August, I figured it could hit $10. Instead it ran to $17 and looked completely stretched. Everyone was treating it like a high-growth stock when realistically sales were only going to grow maybe 30% in 2011 in what's basically a mature market.

Molycorp was another one that got caught up in the momentum trade. Doubled since July thanks to China limiting rare earth exports. But here's the thing - those metals exist everywhere. Australia, Mongolia, Latin America all have deposits. China was just the low-cost producer. Once their export restrictions kicked in, those other mines would naturally come back online. Yet the market was valuing Molycorp at $2.5 billion with no real revenue in sight.

Qlik Technologies had a similar story. Business software company that looked great until you actually looked at the numbers. Sales growth was already slowing before the IPO and would keep cooling. Trading at 60x forward earnings? That's a disaster waiting to happen if they miss even one quarter.

The common thread with most of these 2010 IPO stories was they only made sense if you were betting on long-term trends. China Lodging looked expensive at 50x forward earnings. HiSoft Technologies was a play on Chinese IT development. These weren't companies just getting started - they were already mature enough to go public, just getting caught up in sector momentum.

Jinko Solar stood out as actually reasonably valued even after a +250% pop. Solar sector was hot, sure, but this one had genuine growth credentials and was trading at maybe 7x forward earnings - one of the lowest multiples in the group. Most of the others? They looked ripe for a pullback once momentum traders moved on.

The lesson from that whole 2010 IPO class was pretty clear: don't chase them on day one. Wait for them to settle, actually look at the fundamentals, and you'll find better entry points. A lot of those companies that had their IPO in 2010 became great short candidates once the euphoria wore off.