If the IPOs of Uber Technologies (ticker: UBER ) and Lyft ( LYFT ) were Uber or Lyft drivers … well, you know the drill: stopping in the middle of a busy street without flashers, cutting off pedestrians and shedding someone's driver-side mirror after making an illegal right turn and circling the block mindlessly at 5 miles per hour for five minutes, oblivious to the honking horns behind them.

In fact, the debuts proved so ignominious, they made some investors feel like ignoramuses – though no market player should beat themselves up at this early a stage. To be sure, public perception has played a factor in evaluating how each company fared.

"I don't know that I would characterize them totally as flops as portrayed in the media," says Josh White, assistant professor of finance at Vanderbilt University's Owen School of Management. "Lyft sold 32.5 million shares at $72 per share. It is currently priced around $55. Had they priced it at $50 and it increased to $55 quickly, we would claim this was a 'successful' IPO, but Lyft would have $500 million less in its treasury funds."

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That established, "I have no doubt that executives and employees at Lyft and Uber would've preferred to have seen their stock price increase after the IPO. They would receive positive media coverage and be able to sell their own shares at a higher price once the lock-up period expires," White says.

The rideshare companies have done a pretty decent job at reaching ubiquity on the streets of America and the world. Uber and Lyft stickers, it seems, adorn rear windows everywhere.

But as for the stocks , they've gone nowhere. Since bowing on Nasdaq at the end of March, Lyft has drifted down roughly 20%. Uber by comparison is running like a bull on the New York Stock Exchange, though it has nothing whatsoever to brag about: From its opening bell IPO price of $45, it's down 11% to about $40 per share. Flat tires, anyone?

Nor did spare tires help in Uber's case. News reports circulated widely that its underwriters, with Morgan Stanley at the helm, tried to prop up the IPO by executing a "naked short," where bankers sell more shares than allotted and buy them back in the open market. Some plan. Uber scored the biggest dollar loss of any IPO in history, some $665 million.

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"This is Wall Street at its worst," says Vitaliy Katsenelson, chief investment officer at Investment Management Associates in Greenwood, Colorado, and author of "The Little Book of Sideways Markets."

"Where the stock trades at the opening has little to do with what the IPO company is worth, and has everything to do with supply – insiders selling shares – and demand: the mutual and hedge fund interest in the stock," Katsenelson says. "That's it. The underwriters' job is to assess interest on both sides and set a price near equilibrium."

Others have expressed disbelief at investors who ignored the companies' relative health (of lack of it) and succumbed to the fear of missing out – which, if it had a ticker symbol, would be FOMO.

"I have no idea how anyone can properly value Uber or Lyft," says Robert R. Johnson, a finance professor at Creighton University's Heider School of Business. "Both are growing revenues at a very rapid pace but their sizeable losses continue to widen. The situation reminds me of the old joke describing the fortunes of retailers that have low profit margins, but high volume: 'We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume.' Anyone who 'invests' in Uber or Lyft isn't investing, they are simply speculating."

Johnson, a follower of billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett , has a point. Buying and holding a stock has much to do with whether it's creating value and profit that will pan out in the long term. And while no one can say for sure what Uber and Lyft stock will look like ten years out, they've both seemingly perfected the art of getting off on the wrong financial foot.

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"Warren Buffett would never invest in companies like Uber and Lyft," says Martin Wolf, president and founder of martinwolf Global M&A Advisors in Scottsdale, Arizona. "There's no discussion of buying and holding these. … Uber and Lyft don't have positive cash flow and Buffet doesn't invest in companies that lack positive cash flow, because all his investment decisions are based on current and future earnings."

Maybe these 21st century startup investments deserve a 19th century reality check. "Taxis have been in existence since 1897," says Max Gokhman, head of asset allocation at Pacific Life Fund Advisors and based in Newport Beach, California. "While rideshare has revolutionized the industry, it must nonetheless learn how to operate within this existing sandbox, a challenge that only grows in complexity with scale."

Other experts contend Uber and Lyft simply arrived too late in their trips to Wall Street. While that may elicit a shrug in any other instance, these IPOs had investors champing at the bit, at least for a bit.

"Uber and Lyft have been the most anticipated IPOs there were," says Christopher Ma, director of the George Investments Institute at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. "Over last few years, their private investors' decisions to delay the public capital's 'risk sharing' of their potential profit proved to come with significant cost. The longer the public waits, the more information about company's consistently losing significant money became public."

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In the end, that's a message not even the millions of Uber and Lyft drivers can cut off in traffic. Ma sums it up this way: "One of the reasons that a private company goes public is to take advantage over the 'information asymmetry' – what the public doesn't know."

But perhaps – and it's a tentative perhaps at best – Wall Street just needs time to figure out whether and how it can profitably ride shares in rideshare.

"I believe the ridesharing segment will be an important contributor to the public markets," says Jerry Raio, head of capital markets at ClickIPO. "This portion of the transportation industry is new to the public markets and thus it takes some time to assess these companies and management to execute on their business strategy. The markets take a wait-and-see approach."

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