Among the year’s larger listings were AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave, Swedish buy-now, pay-later firm Klarna, and crypto plays Circle Internet Group and Bullish. In comparison, the London Stock Exchange saw only six companies go public through an IPO, raising just US$208 million or the lowest amount of capital raised through new listings in over three decades. Singapore IPOs raised US$2.5 billion through 38 new listings last year, while 60 new listings in Malaysia raised US$1.47 billion in 2025.
For the past several years, in one of the WhatsApp messaging groups that I belong to, we have been encouraging each other to make a bunch of predictions. Among my favourites is the prediction for the benchmark market gauge, the S&P 500’s year-end level. I got 2021 and 2022 spectacularly wrong with my index predictions. In 2023 and 2024, I predicted the S&P 500 would be up at least over 20%. It was up 26.3% in 2023 and 25.02% in 2024 on a total return basis, including reinvested dividends. Last year, I predicted at least a 20% gain for the index, which ended 2025 up 17.9%. I was slightly off the mark.
This year, I thought I should try my hand at predicting the big IPOs in 2026 for my fortnightly column while keeping my annual market index prediction private for my WhatsApp buddies.
The S&P 500 has more than doubled over the past three years, including reinvested dividends, since the market bottomed in late 2022 amid the fastest US interest-rate hiking cycle in history. In more normal times, there is almost always a flurry of new listings as the economy and the market enter a steep recovery phase. Yet, the past two years have been lacklustre for IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and its tech-heavy, crosstown rival, Nasdaq. The two US bourses raised over US$44 billion ($56.7 billion) from IPOs last year. However, the Hong Kong Exchange emerged as the bourse that single-handedly raised the most, over US$38 billion from IPO listings over the past 12 months. For NYSE and Nasdaq, 2025 was the best year for IPOs since 2021.
