IPO Activity Slow to Recover
The talk of the day is the debut of Reddit (RDDT) on public markets. The stock priced at the top of its expected range, and at the intraday highs traded 70% above the IPO price of $34. While Reddit’s debut places some attention on new companies, overall IPO activity remains muted. In the chart below, we show the average monthly IPO issuance on a rolling 12-month basis in terms of both the number of companies and the $-value of those stocks. Following record issuance in the first couple of years of the pandemic, IPO activity has cratered to some of the lowest levels since the Financial Crisis. While there has been some recovery in IPO activity and Reddit (RDDT) puts IPOs back into the spotlight, there is still plenty of room to recover to levels observed over the past decade.
While not a perfect measure of recent IPOs, the Renaissance IPO ETF (IPO) seeks to track the space. Even though IPO activity has been weak, the ETF has been trending higher over the past year. With the most popular IPO in some time happening today, the IPO ETF has risen to 52-week highs right off extreme overbought levels.
The Closer – Central Banks, SEP, Petroleum Inventories – 3/20/24
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we start out with a rundown of today’s central bank news including that out of the Czech Republic, Canada, and, of course, the FOMC (page 1). We also review the changes to the Summary of Economic Projections (page 2) and market reaction to the Fed (page 3). We finish with a look at the near record petroleum product trade surplus (page 4).
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