In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy picks up where last week's IPO episode left off and walks through what changes once a company is publicly traded. 

He explains the lockup period that follows every IPO — using Airbnb's May 17, 2021 lockup expiration and six-percent drop as the concrete example — then breaks down the SEC's three core disclosure filings (10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K) that drive the rhythm of public-company life. 

Andy then tackles the real cost of all this — short-termism — citing Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon's 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed and drawing on his own experience to show how the quarterly cycle shapes corporate behavior at public and private companies alike.

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through what happens when a company goes public — how a private business with a small group of owners becomes a publicly traded stock that anyone with a brokerage account can buy.

The episode covers the five reasons companies decide to go public, the underwriting process and the role of investment banks, the road show and how the offering price gets set, and what happens on the first day of trading — including why the price you and I pay is almost always different from the price the institutions paid the night before.

Using Airbnb's December 2020 IPO as a concrete example, Andy unpacks the "pop" between offering price and opening price, then revisits the three risks of stock ownership from two weeks ago to highlight how cognitive biases — particularly the urge to follow the crowd — make hot IPOs especially dangerous territory for everyday investors.