The hype of 2021 markets — when companies from Rivian to Roblox went public — could be coming back after a multi-year lull. Several iconic upstarts will remember 2026 as the summer they turned public.

Already, IPOs have marked their best first quarter in terms of volume since 2021’s post-pandemic banner year. It might have been even better, but public listings faltered as the Iran War prompted Clear Street Group and LiftOff Mobile to delay plans, and the number of US-listed IPOs hit a nearly yearlong low in March. However, Wall Street execs think the market is about to stage a comeback bigger than Justin Bieber’s Coachella show.

Goldman Sachs CEO/DJ David Solomon said this week that he expects IPO activity to accelerate after its short spring break, while Morgan Stanley CEO (not DJ) Ted Pick said some of the biggest companies are likely to lead the charge.

Hot IPO Summer

SpaceX’s IPO, which is gearing up to be one of the largest-ever public listings, could go down as soon as June and ignite an explosion of other listings in its plume. AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic are reportedly targeting IPOs later this year.

This week, a slew of other companies made progress toward 2026 IPOs of their own:

• Yesway, a convenience store chain focused on the center states of the US, shared its IPO plans Monday after delaying its listing in 2022. Additionally, biotech and pharma startups including Alama Biosciences, Kailera Therapeutics and REIT National Healthcare Properties launched IPO roadshows. Billionaire Bill Ackman also began marketing the public listing of his hedge fund, Pershing Square, which could raise up to $10 billion.
• Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi confirmed at an event on Tuesday that the crypto exchange, last valued at more than $13 billion, had confidentially filed to go public. The company reportedly froze its IPO plans last month as market conditions put a chill on crypto prices, but now seems to think it’s the moment to strike. Last year, crypto companies including Gemini, Circle and BitGo went public, paving the IPO path for Kraken and, potentially, for other rumored crypto listings, including wallet-focused companies like MetaMask parent ConsenSys and Ledger.

Expensive Ambitions: Companies have stayed private for extended periods as they’ve grown their businesses with alternative funding, but with animal spirits buoying markets, massive startups are ready to dive in for fresh funds. The biggest companies eyeing IPOs could use the funds to fuel their grand plans, from meeting OpenAI’s massive AI compute needs to supporting SpaceX’s hopes of reaching the moon and Mars. And as multi-billion-dollar listings hit markets, they once again become a popular venue for smaller startups to tap into investors’ pro-IPO sentiment.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a hacksaw to the shackles on day traders.

Shares of retail trading platforms such as Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and Webull all surged on Wednesday, a day after the SEC gave the green light to scrap long-held capital requirements for day traders. To put it plainly: Wall Street believes what’s good for day traders (or, at least, freeing for day traders) is definitely good for brokers.

Caps Off

In place since 2001, the SEC’s so-called pattern day-trader rules had banned making more than four day trades within a five-day period if a trader’s margin account held less than $25,000 in assets. Day traders and Wall Street alike had long opposed the threshold; the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a self-regulatory body, had proposed scrapping the rule, which the SEC approved on Tuesday. The new margin standards, set to take effect no sooner than 45 days after FINRA publishes a formal notice of the change, will require traders only to hold enough equity to cover current risks.

While the long-term effects on markets may be hard to quantify, it seems all but certain that retail-friendly financial plumbers just scored a big victory:

• In a note to clients, Goldman Sachs analyst James Yaro wrote that brokers Robinhood, Interactive Brokers and eToro all stand to benefit, flagging Robinhood as a particularly good bet given that its smaller average account size suggests it’s more popular with smaller day traders, who are most likely to benefit from the rule change.
• Shares of Robinhood jumped more than 10% on Wednesday, while shares of Webull climbed more than 11% and shares of eToro and Interactive Brokers climbed 6.4% and 3.4%, respectively.

Retail Revolution: “By eliminating antiquated barriers, this change better reflects the modern trading landscape and ensures everyone has the freedom to invest and participate in the markets on their own terms,” Steve Quirk, Robinhood’s chief brokerage officer, told Bloomberg. Shares of Robinhood have tumbled some 24% this year; in its latest earnings report in February, the company posted lower-than-expected revenue, due largely to the long crypto winter. Perhaps a little more access to good old-fashioned equities is enough to bring about spring.

Call it the Rumplestiltskin effect: Upbeat earnings reports from the biggest US banks this week have been powered by their trading desks, which lately have become virtual sewing machines spinning gold from market volatility.

Another part of the finance business, wealth management, has thrived for similar reasons. Showcasing just how much on Wednesday were Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, the latest big lenders to beat expectations in a week that has signaled Wall Street, despite all of today’s economic noise, is right as rain.

In Good Wealth

Affluent clients, after all, are more likely to seek professional counsel on asset allocation, tax planning and capital preservation when markets, writ large, grow riskier. Bank of America’s Global Wealth and Investment Management unit, which includes Merrill Lynch, confirmed as much on Wednesday. Revenue at the unit grew 12% year-over-year to $6.7 billion in the first quarter. Client balances hit $4.6 trillion, a 10% annual increase. And BofA boasted of an influx of affluent new customers: 4,000 households with investible assets of $500,000 or more.

Revenue at Morgan Stanley’s wealth business grew at an even faster pace, rising 16% to $8.5 billion. Net new assets surged 26% from a year earlier to $118 billion. It’s a payoff from years of work buttressing the wealth management business:

• In 2020, the bank bought the brokerage and trading platform E-Trade, adding millions of client relationships and hundreds of billions in retail client assets. A year earlier, it acquired workplace stock plan administration business Solium.
• In January, CEO Ted Pick completed the first acquisition of his leadership with the takeover of EquityZen, which lets clients buy pre-IPO shares in private, high-growth companies. Long before all of this, the current iteration of the wealth management division was born out of the acquisition of Smith Barney from Citigroup in the wake of the financial crisis.

Private Credit Where Due: While acknowledging the growing asset class is “having a learning moment,” Pick said private credit, which has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, “is going to broadly perform when the economy is in the kind of good shape it’s in right now.”