Lead manager Keefe Bruyette & Woods priced the deal Monday, evening, Aug. 11, 2003, for Tuesday’s market. The deal was priced sooner than expected, a sign the IPO was in demand. As late as Friday, Aug. 8, 2003, a Keefe Bruyette spokesperson said the offering date was scheduled for “the week of Aug. 11th.” No exact day was given.

When Keefe Bruyette announced that the offering was to be priced on Monday evening, it confirmed that its “book,” Wall Street’s term for customers’ indications of interest (or buy orders), was solid and the underwriting was well oversubscribed.

Pricing the deal on the high end of its filing range was another plus sign, which indicated strong demand. Before the 1999 and 2000 era of “insanity dot-com,” bankers traditionally priced IPOs at a 15 percent to 20 percent discount from comparable publicly traded companies.

Studies made by “The IPO Aftermarket,” a now defunct weekly newsletter, showed that the average IPO opening-day gain in bullish times was up about 20 percent. When the market was weak, the opening-day gains were up about 15 percent.

Fast forward to Tuesday, August 12, 2003: The IPO market has come full circle. At $21 a share, the Direct General IPO was priced within the pre-insanity dot-com range with a discount of 15 percent to 20 percent. As such, one would expect Direct General’s IPO to score an opening-day gain of $24 to $25 a share.

So that’s why no eyebrows were raised in Harry’s, that famous Wall Street watering hole, when Direct General’s stock closed at $25 a share. They saw it coming.