A trade impasse in the U.S.-China trade deal and fears of a global economic slowdown are causing markets to fret when it comes to allocating capital into equities, but that hasn’t stopped a red hot initial public offering (IPO) market. This is helping one IPO-focused ETF be a top performer thus far in 2019.
In fact, some analysts are making it known that an uptick in IPO activity has been correlated with downturns in the S&P 500 over a 12-month period.
“Interestingly, the economic expansion which began in late 2016 was not matched by a pickup in IPO activity until early 2019, suggesting that this current wave of IPOs may simply be catching up to growth,” said Bernstein equity strategist Noah Weisberger.
For investors who want a piece of the IPO action, but don’t necessarily want to assume all the risk associated with investing in a single stock like Uber or Lyft can look to the Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPO). IPO seeks to replicate the price and yield performance of the Renaissance IPO Index, which is a portfolio of companies that have recently completed an initial public offering (“IPO”) and are listed on a U.S. exchange.
The fund itself is up 27.79 percent year-to-date, making it one of the top ETFs highlighted in a recent segment of CNBC’s “ETF Edge.” Per CNBC, IPO consists of a “basket of 60 of the most recent large IPOs. No surprises here — the IPO market has been red hot this year, bolstered by record highs in the stock market. The average first-day pop of a new issue has been 22% — well above the historic average return of 12-15%. Top holdings include Okta, Spotify, Roku and DocuSign.”
For investors seeking opportunities overseas, the Renaissance International IPO ETF (NYSEArca: IPOS) adds an international spin to the IPO market. IPOS tracks the rules-based Renaissance International IPO Index, which adds sizeable new companies on a fast-entry basis with the rest upon scheduled quarterly reviews. Current IPOS holdings include SoftBank Corp, Xiaomi and China Tower Corp.
Ridesharing IPOs like Lyft and Uber may have sputtered off the starting line, but some IPOs like Slack are getting rave reviews from market analysts keeping an eye out on the latest offerings from Silicon Valley. Investors who haven’t warmed up to allocating capital into the IPO space can dip their toes in the water with exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Uber and Lyft aren’t the prime representatives of an IPO space that is actually hot to trot in 2019. According to data provider Dealogic, 25 tech companies have raised $19 billion via IPOs and overall, they’ve been generating returns of 34 percent on their first day of trading, which represents the best performance since 2013.
On average, these IPOs are up over 30 percent. Last week saw the debut of messaging and workplace collaboration company Slack, which unlike its ridesharing IPO peers, surged on its first day of trading.
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