Another day, another historic IPO.

With the SpaceX debut just days away, Wall Street’s marquee investment banks are already lining up for the right to underwrite a roughly $1 trillion IPO from Anthropic, expected sooner rather than later after the firm’s confidential registration filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

To Fee or Not to Fee

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are all shoo-ins for large roles in Anthropic’s IPO. After all, private companies don’t raise more than $100 billion in funding without getting a little cozy with Wall Street’s biggest institutions; one Polymarket contract asking who will lead the IPO gives Morgan Stanley a slight edge among the three heavy favorites as of Tuesday afternoon. It’d be a nice win for the bank, which led all Wall Street banks in equity capital markets revenue last year but has recently lost ground to Goldman Sachs. If Goldman gets the nod, it’d go two-for-two in securing the premier position for this year’s mega-IPOs after recently scoring the top slot among the 23 banks underwriting the SpaceX IPO.

Just being involved in the process is a prize. In March, The Information reported that bankers involved in taking the company public expect it to raise a monstrous $60 billion in its IPO, at a roughly $1 trillion valuation, though that was before Anthropic’s most recent private fundraising round. Everyone’s going to want a piece of that pie, though if the SpaceX IPO is any indication, underwriting a giga-sized IPO might require one small concession:

• According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Elon Musk’s conglomerate is attempting to negotiate its IPO underwriting fees to a mere 0.75%. For reference, a ho-hum $1 billion IPO typically comes with fees of 4% to 7%, though Wall Street will take fees slightly above 1% for mega-IPOs.
• Still, even a smaller-than-usual 0.75% underwriting fee would net underwriters some $500 million, as SpaceX seeks to raise a record-breaking $75 billion from the public market while setting its trajectory toward a $1.8 trillion valuation.

Liquid Death: Of course, banks will get another shot at a jackpot whenever OpenAI gets itself across the IPO finish line. But being slow out of the gate may have consequences for Sam Altman’s firm. “SpaceX is going to consume an absolute ton of capital, and the guy that goes second is going to have a better position than the guy that goes third,” Patrick Healy, founder of IPO advisory firm Issuer Network, recently told The Wall Street Journal. Worse for OpenAI, Google just cut in line. On Monday, the internet giant said it is seeking to sell $80 billion in stock to fund its ongoing AI infrastructure buildout, which is now eating into its substantial free cash flow, and analysts say other hyperscalers could soon follow suit. The clock’s ticking, Sam.

The Certified Financial Planner certification remains the most widely recognized and largest accreditation for financial planners, with just shy of 110,000 professionals now holding the designation and a record 4,391candidates having sat for the most recent exam. Earning the CFP has traditionally been seen as a capstone achievement, one that gives advisors critical knowledge about taxes, estate planning, retirement, investments and insurance. That remains true, advisors say, but some now feel holding the CFP marks alone isn’t enough, especially when it comes to advising clients on drawing down savings during retirement. As a result, more advisors are pursuing targeted credentials to complement their capabilities, and marketability.

“The future of the profession isn’t fewer specialists,” CFP Board CEO K. Dane Snowden told Advisor Upside. “It’s more professionals whose specialized expertise is grounded in the holistic, ethical framework that CFP certification represents.”

Let’s Get Specific

While there are hundreds of designations in the field today, advisors seem to be coalescing around a select group of both newly developed and longstanding credentials. Two brought up consistently in informal surveys of Financial Planning Association members and Dynasty Financial Partners-affiliated advisors were the Tax Planning Certified Professional and the Retirement Income Certified Professional designations offered by the American College of Financial Services. The former was launched just last year but has since become the fastest-growing certification in the college’s nearly 100-year history. The Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor accreditation also came up frequently, as did the Enrolled Agent designation from the IRS.

“The CFP does a great job of providing general financial planning training,” said Dwight Dettloff, founder of Winding Trail Financial Planning. “But the RICP goes into specific areas that are most relevant to retirees, including Social Security, cash flow, taxes and investments.” Others agreed, noting both clients and advisors spend years focused on accumulation and “climbing the mountain.” However, coming down the mountain requires a different skillset and mindset.

When it comes to claiming Social Security, a number of advisors reported obtaining the Registered Social Security Analyst designation, and some like Antonio Lugo, advisor at Smart Wealth Strategies, have complemented the RSSA by becoming certified with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “The landscape around taxes, Medicare, extended care and retirement account regulations evolves constantly,” Lugo said. “Staying current is essential.”

Two Birds, One Stone. Some advisors, including Maggie Beach at NexJenn Financial Services, said their need to obtain continuing education credits to maintain one credential has led to a virtuous cycle. “I’ve obtained the RSSA, RICP and other certifications just to satisfy ongoing CE for my CFP and CPA, and they have become key to my retirement planning engagements,” Beach said. “Not to mention, they give a bit of a leg up on AI, which doesn’t understand some of the nuances yet.”

No one can predict the spot price of crypto, but they can at least leverage it.

Exchange-traded fund providers are coming up with increasingly creative ways to give investors access to digital assets. The latest example comes from VanEck, which launched last week the first US-listed ETF designed to track BNB, the native asset of one of the world’s largest blockchain ecosystems. Direxion also announced two new ETFs leveraging exposure to bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as two others tracking gold and silver, assets that have all been used as inflation hedges. The move signals an increasing appetite for products that allow investors to leverage short-term bets on the market and comes at an interesting time for the asset class: More than $1 billion exited spot bitcoin ETFs in the last week alone.

“At this point, we’re seeing DeFi and TradFi increasingly coming together,” said Mo Sparks, chief product officer at Direxion.

Spot Plays

The Direxion funds bill themselves as the first to offer pure swap spot exposure, giving buyers 2x leverage on existing ETFs, specifically the largest funds in each of the asset categories. (The spot bitcoin fund, for example, invests in IBIT.) While none of the funds are holding the crypto or precious metals directly, the underlying ETFs are. “We’re wrapping and getting exposure at the 2x level via a swap from a bank to IBIT,” he said. “Others do something similar but include futures or are only futures [contracts].”

The research shows leveraged spot products may pick up from here:

• According to a recent Morningstar report, more than 300 funds that launched last year were trading-leveraged equity products, more than any other category the firm tracks.
• More than 90% of trading in single-stock, leveraged funds was done by individual investors, showing their allure within the retail market.

HODL On a Sec: The VanEck BNB ETF (VBNB) is the latest product in the company’s crypto suite, which includes the popular HODL fund. The issuer is hoping to tap into growing demand for BNB, which is one of the top 5 cryptocurrencies in the world by market cap and among the top 3 based on daily active users, according to a statement. “Until today, BNB stood out among major crypto assets as one of the few not yet available in a US spot ETP,” Kyle DaCruz, VanEck’s director of digital assets products, said in the release.