Found on Wednesday: an antidote to the recent downturn on Wall Street tech stocks.
It comes in the form of Linux distributor Red Hat Software. Shares of the stock soared more than 270 percent after its Wednesday debut and closed at US$52.
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It priced at $14, above its initial US$10-12 range.
This indicates that investors are salivating for the stock, even when the market has been down.
Red Hat raised an extra $84 million to compete with the biggest operating system pusher -- Microsoft.
Not all analysts felt that the market was reacting realistically to the IPO. "It's a quality company," said Vincent Slavin, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. "The only problem with Red Hat is ... it bid up too much too soon like everything else. With IPOs, you can be fashionably late.
"You don't need to buy them the first day."
RedHat bundles the Linux operating system to sell to such computer makers as Dell.
The Linux operating system has gained tremendous momentum in the past year as a platform for Web servers. As an open source system, the OS is developed and tuned by a worldwide community of volunteer developers.
Because of an ETrade snafu, however, some members of that community missed out on a chance to cash in on their support of the OS.
After the Red Hat offering price rose Tuesday, ETrade sent emails to its customers telling them to call if they wanted to change or cancel their offers. Frank Byrum, a longtime OS user, was prepared to spend as much as $20 per share, so he never bothered to call.
But his share order never went through. Byrum said he spent several anxious hours arguing with company customer support, which tried to appease him by offering him a berth in a stock pool; however, he almost certainly won't get the amount he requested.
"I felt that maybe being part of the open source community, I could make some money," said Byrum, an ISP network engineer. "For all the millionaires, there's thousands of people who haven't benefited. It would be nice to benefit from something you know and love."
Slashdot, a popular site among Linux aficionados, quickly filled with harsh messages from ETrade customers who were denied Red Hat shares.
ETrade customer Dan Halverson said that in his 18 months with the online broker, he has never seen them require a reconfirmation when prices rise.
"I figure it's basically a missed opportunity," he said of his failed Red Hat investment.
Spokesmen for ETrade and its public relations company did not return phone calls requesting comment.
The offering is underwritten by Wall Street heavyweight Goldman Sachs. Red Hat, based in Durham, North Carolina, saw losses of $91,000 on $10 million in revenues for the fiscal year ending February 1999.
Reporter Chris Gaither contributed to this story.
