Grey-market premium is going to cross your screen if you follow IPOs at all. Pretending the column does not exist is unrealistic. Letting it choose the application is how people overpay for a story that has not listed. The middle path is to give the quote a job that is small, late, and reversible. What GMP is is the definition. This page is the habit.

Do the other work first

Before you look at the premium, write down four lines from documents, not from chats.

  • The upper price and the lot, in rupees blocked. The band and the lot.
  • How much of the offer is a fresh issue. The DRHP route.
  • The one risk factor that would actually hurt this business, in a sentence you wrote yourself.
  • Whether you are looking at a mainboard grid or an SME platform. The difference.

If you cannot fill the four lines, you are not ready to interpret a premium, because the premium will fill the vacuum. Close the tracker. Read the prospectus summary and the risk chapter. Then come back.

Give the quote one question only

The question is: “Is unofficial chatter calm, hot, or sour, relative to this same issue last week?” It is not: “What return will I make?” Use the history on the IPO page. A premium that has sat in a tight range for several days is a stabler conversation than a premium that doubled this afternoon after a subscription headline. Stability is not accuracy. It is only a clue that you are not looking at a one-hour spike.

Compare like with like. A 15% mainboard premium and a 50% SME premium do not belong on one league table. A negative premium on a large, fully priced offer is information about that band. A negative premium on a day when every issue is negative is information about the mood of the unofficial market. The tracker’s filters exist so you can see which of those you are holding.

The decision test

After you have a view from the prospectus — apply, or skip — look at the GMP and ask whether it changed the view. If you were going to skip and the GMP is high, and now you want to apply, the quote is driving. Stop. High unofficial prices are the worst time to let the quote drive, because that is when you are paying, in the form of a crowded lottery and a band that already reflects excitement, for a number that may not survive listing day.

If you were going to apply because the business and the price made sense at the cap, and the GMP is flat or negative, notice the discomfort and do not automatically obey it. A sour quote can mean the band is ambitious, which is relevant. It can also mean the unofficial market is thin or gloomy about everything. Go back to line three of your notes, the risk you wrote yourself. If the quote did not teach you a fact about the company, it does not get a vote.

If you were going to apply and the GMP is very high, the honest extra risk is behavioural. You might be applying for the pop. Say so in writing. Then size the application as money you can lose if the pop does not appear, not as money that is already earned. One lot at a size you can ignore is a different act from the maximum retail application financed by next month’s expenses. The mistakes guide is full of the second act.

Do not stack unofficial numbers

GMP plus subscription plus a tip from a channel is not triangulation. It is one mood repeated in three places. Subscription at least comes from the exchange file, so it is a better document than GMP, and it still does not justify the price. Anchors are a real list of institutions. They accepted the issue price, not the premium. Stacking them on top of GMP double-counts excitement. Prefer one primary source: the prospectus for the business, the exchange file for demand, the registrar for allotment. Let the tracker be the index that points at those, not a fourth source you treat as an authority.

A numeric guardrail

Whatever the premium, compute a dull outcome before you approve the mandate. Dull outcome: you are allotted one lot and the share lists at the issue price, then falls 10% in a month. Write the rupee loss on your lot size. If that figure is unacceptable, the application is too big, or it should not exist. The exciting outcome — allotted, lists at the GMP — can stay in the same note as a possibility, not as the base case. People do the arithmetic backwards. They start from the premium and ask whether they can afford to miss it. Missing an unofficial number is free. Holding a real loss is not.

What the column is for on this site

The GMP tracker is a board of stored quotes so you do not have to collect them from ten chats of uneven honesty. We show the estimate as arithmetic so the addition is visible. We do not sort your life by the gain percentage. Use the history, use the filters, then leave the page and read the offer. If a quote looks wrong compared with a company filing, the contact form can correct a stale number. It cannot give you a better quote, a dealer, or a listing promise. The disclaimer is short because the rule is short: indicative, unofficial, not advice, not an invitation to trade outside the exchange.