While IPO season was in full swing earlier this year, things seemed to have calmed down in certain sectors, namely daily deals.  Groupon in particular seems to be having trouble reaching an IPO launch, raising a few eyebrows as to how the company’s been run up to now, and how its financial stagger affects an industry dubbed the next social media wave.

In part due to the volatility of equity markets, IPOs have also become a touchy topic.  According to London-based research firm Dealogic, the first half of the year started quite good as the value of IPOs increased by 14% to $114 billion globally, but the volatility of the market forced some companies to reduce their target price, postpone or even withdraw their IPOs all together.

“Volatility is the main issue for the IPO market. At the moment, there is a very strong correlation between IPO activity and secondary-market performance,” says Matthew Westerman, global head of equity capital markets at Goldman Sachs.  Indeed, the more shares fall, the more issues get canceled.

One reason for the volatility is related to Standard & Poor lowering the federal government’s credit rating back in August.  This led to a plunge in stock indexes, erasing more than a trillion dollars in combined shareholder value.  Eight companies have since abandoned or delayed their IPO plans.

“There is a fallacy right now that investing at the early stage is safe — if a startup is not working, you’ll be able to sell it to Google, Twitter or Facebook, recover your money and then some,” said Jeff Clavier of Palo Alto’s SoftTech VC.  “But potential acquirers have seen the market turn and no longer need to offer a premium.”

Groupon is one of those companies experiencing the effects of a volatile market.  They were supposed to have launched an IPO by this time, but the daily deals site had some setbacks.  One was brought about by some discrepancies in how Groupon is tallying up its metrics. Groupon addressed investors’ concerns by stating on their blog:

“Instead of showing the exact number of Groupons purchased, the counter is now reduced by a random percentage – sometimes 0.5%, sometimes 19.5%, or anything in between.

Additionally, we are capping and rounding the counter from time to time. We now precede the Groupon count with the word “over” to reflect that the actual number is always actually larger than what’s being displayed.”

Groupon has yet to announce the specific date for their IPO, as they are currently facing two action lawsuits.  They’ve also lost their COO in his return to Google, and fell under great scrutiny when an internal memo was made public.