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The IPO Frenzy...What Does It Mean? How Can I Best Participate?
Howard Lindzon
April 02, 2019
$LYFT came public the other day…so far so good for the Venture Capitalists, Goldman’s Sack and Jimmy the Prick Morgan (JP Morgan for people over 70).
So far not so good for the buyers:
Fred Wilson calls it the IPO Bonanza in his great post covering the good, the bad and the ugly.
After predicting an IPO bonanza in my new year’s day post in 2015, and being largely wrong about it for four years, we are finally seeing it happen.
I am not exactly sure what it is about this year, as opposed to any of the last five years, that has drawn all of these highly valued private companies into the public markets, but here we have it.
Fred asks ‘what finally happened’ and I responded with… ‘December 2018 happened’.
Here is what the ETF that tracks the strongest/hottest IPO’s looked like in December 2018:
From October 2018 through December, the index/ETF crashed 30 percent.
I think a lot of bankers and CEO’s were huddling and saying ‘be ready to go on the next move higher’.
If $LYFT had gone public in December, it might have been forced to do a deal in the 50’s.
Pinterest is coning public soon. Fred has a nice high level view of it from the S-1.
These days it is much easier for investors like me to find clear and crisp analysis of S-1’s from trusted venture capitalists. Here is the excellent Tom Tunguz analyzing Zoom’s S1.
Once public, my little trick is to follow the IPO ETF from Renaissance and the great stream they share on Stocktwits.
I also love looking at the IPO ETF to check the components of it. Koyfin tracks that for me here.
For more live discussion of IPO’s, you can hang out in the IPO Candy room of Stocktwits.
Hope this helps.
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