The Biggest IPO Season I've Seen in a While
I think this might be the biggest IPO season I’ve seen in my career. Actually, let’s just say it is. The numbers are staggering, and I graduated college in May of 2000, so that’s saying something.
An Initial Public Offer, or IPO, is the moment a private company opens its doors to public investors for the first time. When I was finishing college, the hot IPOs were companies like Pets.com, remember the sock puppet mascot, and Webvan, an online grocery delivery service that was going to change everything. Anything with a .com took off. The story was compelling, and the prices reflected all of that enthusiasm. Then reality set in. Pets.com went bankrupt within a year of going public. Webvan burned through over a billion dollars before collapsing. The narrative was great, but the business wasn't.
Amazon and Google also went public around that same era, and we all know how those turned out. It’s not that IPOs are bad. It’s that the hype cycle has a way of making it very hard to tell the difference between the next Amazon and the next Pets.com while you’re living inside it.
Fast forward to 2026. This year's class includes SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. These are names that carry a lot of excitement and even bigger valuations. SpaceX alone is targeting a valuation between $1.75 and $2 trillion. I'll be honest, I've had a lot of clients ask me about SpaceX specifically, and I get it. I'm genuinely excited to see what the company can do. I think Elon Musk is our generation's once-in-a-generation mind. That's not something I say lightly.
Here is where I am cautious. What I’ve seen from IPOs over and over again is that stocks often come out of the gate at very high prices, fueled by excitement, media coverage, and fear of missing out. Then reality starts to settle in. As investors get actual public financial information and the market begins valuing the business more rationally, the stock often finds a very different price. I generally believe markets are efficient over time and that prices eventually reflect the available information. IPOs, though, can take a while to get there.
One of the most recent examples is UBER. Uber went public on May 10, 2019, listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol UBER at an IPO price of $45 per share. This is how it performed:
**Made with Claude AI
I've watched this pattern play out enough times that I'd be surprised if SpaceX is any different. That doesn't mean it's a bad investment over the long haul. If you genuinely believe in the company and what it's building, there may be a place for it in a portfolio. Buying on day one though at peak hype is a very different decision than buying after the hype dies down.
In my opinion, narratives are driving prices more than fundamentals. People aren't just buying SpaceX, they're buying a story with the hope that the company grows into fundamentals quickly. I understand the appeal. I just want to make sure that when my clients make that decision, they're doing it with their eyes open.