Hi!

I am currently writing my dissertation in an MSc Finance. The current direction of the dissertation is looking at underpricing and long term abnormal returns of IPOs. I am struggling a bit with getting data on the following:

- Open and close price of stocks just from first day of trading
- Historical monthly returns for stocks

Has anyone written a dissertation in finance in a similar area, and how did you make the data collection as easy as possible?
I am also open to taking other directions for the dissertation, in case anyone has any suggestions on what data is easy to find and extract in large quantities in the area of finance.
Sharing of any and all experiences are appreciated!

Thanks!
Rob

Historical stock prices are hard to find for free but a lot of buisness news sites quote the open/close of IPOs in the daily briefings. If you have the time you could trawl through them and manually find them.