This year, U.S. stock market bellwether the S&P 500 is up 10%.
If you followed our advice and bought tech stocks, though, you’d be sitting on gains of 41% since the start of the year.
That’s how much the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 Index is up in 2020.
Those are decent returns. Most folks would be happy with them.
But what if I (Chris Lowe) told you there are really two markets?
The public market for Main Street investors… and a hidden market where the rich and connected make their millions…
Sounds shocking…
But as I’ll show you today, this hidden market not only exists… it’s also a source of extraordinary profits.
So far this year, shares investors bought in this hidden market have averaged gains of 22,946% on the days they first became available to public investors.
Companies don’t start out with their shares listing on a stock exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange, for the public to buy.
They start out in private hands. Only after a company has an initial public offering – or IPO – can regular investors get their hands on shares… at already inflated prices.
According to colleague and former hedge fund manager Teeka Tiwari, pre-IPO deals are one of the best places in the world right now to find life-changing profits.
You may remember that last year there was a lot of hype for the IPO market. Then the WeWork debacle struck.
The company started out 2019 valued at $47 billion in the private market. By September, after concerns grew about its corporate governance… and lack of ability to turn a profit… it pulled its IPO.
This sent shockwaves through the IPO market as investors rethought company valuations.
With lockdowns in effect across the U.S., the coronavirus kept IPOs quiet until May.
But then a switch flipped. And in the second half of the year, the IPO market has been on fire.
The total money companies have raised at their IPOs since then smashed 2019’s total for the entire year.
The money companies are raising is on pace to come close to the $107 billion record from 2014.
A lot of folks know Teeka as a crypto guy.
Since 2016, he’s been helping readers make fortunes in bitcoin and other crypto investments.
He recommended bitcoin to his readers at $428 in April 2016. It’s up 2,554% – to $11,360 – since then.
The same month, he recommended what’s now the world’s second-most valuable crypto asset, Ethereum, at $9. Since then, it’s up 4,677% – now trading at $430.
But Teeka was a Wall Street money manager… and then a hedge fund manager… before he discovered cryptos.
And as a former insider, he understands the real money on Wall Street comes from private deals, not publicly available stocks.
For years, only Wall Street hotshots were able to get in on these lucrative deals. But now, Teeka sees a way for you to get in, too…
He’s put together a video presentation all about the opportunity he sees dead ahead in the 2020 IPO boom.
He says it’s too lucrative to pass up. Here he is with more on that…
This market has nearly $6.5 trillion in assets under management. But for years, Wall Street has walled it off from regular investors. And for good reason. The gains these guys pocket are truly massive – far bigger than what you get with regular stocks.
Take online auction site eBay (EBAY). If you bought shares in eBay on the day it went public, you would have picked them up for $18. In one day, you’d have turned every $1,000 into $2,630.
But Benchmark, a well-connected venture capital fund, bought shares for 11 cents and turned every $1,000 into $427,270.
There are hundreds of other examples. Teeka again…
If you invested in ridesharing company Lyft (LYFT) in 2013 when it was still private, you would’ve made 87 times more money than what IPO investors made.
Private investors in social media company Snap (SNAP) saw a return of 250x on IPO day. Investors that came in at the IPO price made just a 44% gain.
As Teeka says, investing in post-IPO and pre-IPO shares is the difference between taking a two-week luxury vacation… and going on a luxury vacation for life.
But until recently, 99% of Americans couldn’t access pre-IPO deals… or the turbocharged profits they offer the rich and connected.
It comes via the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That’s America’s main stock market regulator.
Last week, the SEC approved a proposal by the New York Stock Exchange to allow companies to raise capital through direct listings on exchanges.
This allows private companies to list on public exchanges without taking the traditional, cumbersome, and expensive IPO route.
And Teeka believes it’s going to create a wave of brand-new IPO millionaires.
The potentially life-changing opportunities don’t come from buying after the IPO, along with the crowd.
They come from buying ahead of the IPO and profiting as public investors pile in. Teeka again…
For years, insiders have dumped their shares, which they bought cheap in the private market, on public stock market investors.
But nobody complains. To get you to buy the shares after they go public, investment banks price the IPO deal so that you can make double-, triple-, even quadruple-digit returns.
But while you’re popping champagne over your windfall, the insiders who bought in the private market are laughing their butts off on the yacht you just bought for them.
Yesterday in these pages, Teeka showed how billionaire Bill Gurley’s venture capital (VC) firm, Benchmark, made a 64,200% gain when private shares it had bought in rideshare company Uber (UBER) went public.
Regular investors who bought Uber shares on its IPO day still haven’t made a dime.
And Peter Thiel, a billionaire Silicon Valley VC, initially invested $500,000 in Facebook shares in the private market in 2004.
The day Facebook went public, his pre-IPO shares rocketed 200,000%. That was enough to turn Thiel’s $500,000 investment into over $1 billion.
Over that same time, shares investors bought in the public market, after Facebook had its IPO, are up just 239%.
BigCommerce Holdings (BIGC) allows online stores to use its platform to build their websites and run their payment systems.
After starting out with tiny online marketplaces in 2009, the company now counts Ben & Jerry’s, Sony, Woolrich, and other major outlets as clients.
And business is booming. E-commerce has been the big winner since the coronavirus began, with global online sales up 71% since the start of the year.
BIGC went public on August 4. If you’d bought its shares after they went public, you’re up 50%.
Most folks would be happy with earning that in a month. But if you’d been a late-stage investor in BIGC shares before they went public, you’d be up as much as 4,441%.
The public shares, in other words, turned every $1,000 into $1,500. Private shares… even if you were one of the last investors in before the IPO… turned every $1,000 into $45,410.
It’s created an e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars.
That’s a great business to be in. The used car market in the U.S. is the largest consumer product category. Last year, it generated $841 billion in sales on 40 million cars.
It’s also a market still in its infancy. Today, just 0.9% of car sales take place online. But by 2030, analysts predict e-commerce will make up roughly half of all used car sales.
Vroom went public on June 9. If you’d invested after its shares went public, you’d be up 48% today. That’s a great return over just four months.
But if you’d been even a late-stage investor in Vroom shares when it was still a private company, you’d be up 3,797%.
That’s the difference between making $1,480 and $38,970 on every $1,000 you invest.
As you’ve seen today, post-IPO gains are just table scraps uber-wealthy private investors throw your way so they can offload their stocks onto you… while they make the massive gains.
That’s why Teeka says if you really want to be set for life, you need to buy shares in private companies before they go public.
And thanks to another SEC rule change, ordinary investors like you can now profit in what was once Wall Street’s exclusive playground.
That’s why Teeka has put together a free special event to show you how you can profit in private markets. It kicks off next Wednesday, September 9, at 8 p.m. ET.
And leading up to it, he’ll be holding his first-ever, free pre-IPO workshop. You can go here to get notified as soon as he releases workshop videos.
Please make sure to sign up here for Teeka’s event. I’ll be attending. And I hope you will, too.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
September 2, 2020
Bray, Ireland
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