With Twitter becoming a publically traded company today, I thought it was worth taking a look at some of the other tech stocks’ IPOs. Eager traders jump at the chance to buy pieces of these companies, typically sending the opening-day trading prices far above the IPO prices set beforehand.

Here, I’ve plotted the IPO price, high price, and closing price for the first day of trading of nine tech stocks, including Twitter. The top graph shows the actual value of the stock (in pre-split dollars, not adjusted for inflation) during the day of trading. The bottom graph shows percent change relative to the IPO price. As you can see, most of the stocks soared before coming back down at the close of the market. While Yahoo reached the highest percent change during the day at 231% above its IPO, eBay had the best day overall, closing at 163% above its IPO. Twitter closed 73% above its IPO, with a peak day-trading price at 93%. Facebook made the least noise on its opening day, rising 18% above the IPO price, but closing less than a percent above it.

Data source: http://finance.yahoo.com/