The tech industry has produced some of the fastest growing companies on the planet, from Amazon.com in online retail to Google in Internet search. But is tech the best place to park your money when looking at initial public offerings?

Interestingly, at least this year, the answer is a definite no.

An analysis by Daniel Hom on the IPO Dashboards blog finds that the 24 technology companies that have gone public this year are collectively down on average 19.4 percent. That makes the tech industry the worst sector, behind energy, real estate, industrial materials, health care and business/financial services.

IPOs, in general, are risky bets. All six categories showed double digit declines this year.

According to IPO Dashboards, the two worst performers are health care’s Kips Bay Medical and social-networking site FriendFinder Networks.

Zillow, the online real estate company which is Seattle’s only high-tech IPO so far this year, lost some ground during the past week and is now sitting at $25.25. That’s still up from its $20 offering price in July.

But those with positive returns represent a relatively small class in the tech field. Hom writes:

Of the technology crew, LinkedIn and HomeAway might be doing well, but for everyone one of those, there’s two Pandora’s and Renren’s to keep mind of. It’s in this shadow that questions of web 2.0 viability and a possible new bubble continue to brew. Given the situation, perhaps it’s not so surprising that Groupon, Zynga and other tech-IPOs are delaying their offerings, or putting them on hold completely. Scrutiny of a tech company’s fundamentals is definitely at a high.

Here’s a look at some of the top (and bottom) performers in tech. (Zillow is not included here, some I am wondering if it gets stuck into the real estate category).


Related: High-tech jobs drive wage increases in Seattle, San Fran

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