I initially thought I might participate in the IPO. I’m still not over what /u/spez did last year but I justified it the same way I ever bet AGAINST my favorite sports teams. That way if they lose there would is still an upside. I don’t think Reddit will be a great investment. But if they are, hey, at least there’s some money in my pocket.
This would have been my first IPO. And what made me finally decide against participating was the recognition that buying into an IPO, unlike regular stock trading, is actually putting money directly into the company’s pockets.
Fuck that; fuck them; and especially fuck /u/spez.
I read a pretty brutal analysis by a financial expert on some business magazine site. My biggest takeaways were:
new shares get 1 vote per share, existing shareholders 10 per share
under the rules they are doing the ipo they can skip providing solid numbers for the last years, and are unbound by board opinion on how much money can go into executive compensation and golden parachute packages.
Now I’m not an investor at all but this rings so many grift alarm bells I don’t understand why anyone would buy that shit. Seems like a completely dubious investment set up to pay out spez and then collapse.
I like dabbling in IPOs (read: gambling). IPOs are almost always a bad call for regular investors. The value almost never goes up immediately after sale unless the company somehow all of a sudden has demand from a ton of investors of all sizes. And a company that can't turn a profit isn't likely to be that.
So, if you do want to buy in because you see them doing good in the long run, maybe wait a month for the price to settle, then get in.