Since its high-profile IPO on May 19, shares of LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) have had a steady fall — they have gone from $122.70 to a low of $60.14.

But on Tuesday, the bulls rushed into the stock, as the price surged by 12% to $85.56. While the overall rally in the equities markets was a help, the major factor was the expiration of the so-called “quiet period” — the last 40 days after the IPO, after which Wall Street underwriters can initiate research.

As should be no surprise, LinkedIn got glowing coverage. There were buy ratings from firms like UBS, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Bank of America. Read 

Since the financial crisis of 2008, investors have been searching for ways to get growth companies into their portfolios.  One place to find them has been with China’s hot IPO market.

The problem:  it’s going cold quickly.  In fact, the Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a bulletin to warn investors about the risks of Chinese stocks. 

The agency is particularly concerned about reverse mergers.  Essentially, these are IPOs that launch in the U.S. market by merging into a corporate shell.  Because of this, it is often easier to avoid disclosures.  Read 

Last week, there was definitely much excitement when Groupon filed to go public, announcing it will trade its stock under the ticker GRPN.  However, after the things calmed down, people started to wonder:  the company has been losing gobs of money.  Actually, it comes to about $540 million since its launch in 2008. So why would Groupon stock be such a hit?

OK, the company needs to make significant investments to scale its operations across many cities.  Yet it also costs huge amounts to get new customers.  The fact is that there is much competition in the market, such as from LivingSocial, which is backed by Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), as well as new entrants like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and even Facebook via Facebook deals.

The CEO of the company, Andrew Mason, wrote a letter to “potential shareholders” for the IPO filing and made an interesting request — that is, he said investors should ignore the marketing costs. Read 

In a mere 30 months, Groupon has become a phenomenon.  Now, the company has filed to go public – and it will be a mega deal.  The lead underwriters include Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS).  The proposed ticker symbol is GRPN but has not selected the NYSE or NASDAQ yet for its stock exchange.

Groupon essentially uses the Internet to drive customers to local businesses.  Popular merchants include restaurants, spas and car washes.

Of course, the offers are at deep discounts – which are known as groupons.  In the first quarter, there were 28.1 million sold.  This compares to only 116,231 in the second quarter of 2009. Read 

Since the dot-com bust in 2000, the IPO market has been fairly muted.  True, there have been some big deals, such as the offering of Google (Nasdaq:GOOG).  But that was really an exception.

In the past couple weeks, however, it looks like the IPO market may be in the early stages of a new boom. The first sign of this was the debut of LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), but there were also successful offerings from companies like Yandex (NASDAQ:YNDX), which is the largest search engine in Russia.

However, the real drivers of an IPO boom will be the offerings of the mega Internet brands.  These include Zynga, Twitter, Groupon and Facebook.  No doubt, these will cause intense media attention.  In fact, they may get retail investors back into the market again. Read 

In the past couple weeks, tech IPOs have suddenly become a red-hot topic.  It was a big surprise that LinkedIn (Nasdaq:LNKD) doubled on its first day of trading, which gave the company a market cap of $9 billion.  Then there was Yandex (NASDAQ:YNDX), which is called the” Google of Russia.”  Its now valued at about $11 billion.

So what will be the next hot IPOs?  There are certainly some solid prospects, which are likely to see hefty valuations.

Here’s a look: Read