Q4 sentiment

Just 45 days ago, there was a good amount of cautious optimism going into Q4. There were rumors of IPOs that may creak the window open and there were hopes that things would stand trending upwards again.

Fast forward to today and unfortunately the only positives may be that the bankers get to spend the holidays with their families and not at the office. Things have not gone as the optimist had hope for. Instacart and Klaviyo went public and while neither IPO went poorly, they didn’t go well either.

For now, the IPO window is completely shut. The other companies rumored to go public in Q4 seemed to have shut things down for the year. The public markets continue to struggle with the $QQQ down 2.72% in the last month. It’s been an up year overall for the public markets, but the trend has been reversing the last few months.

The secondary markets have further contracted and I suspect that Q4 may have a chance to beat Q2 for the lowest volume quarter in a long while.

None of this is great news of course. We’ll have to see what February of next year brings in terms of IPOs. There is a large backlog and I suspect that some companies will give it a shot.