Do you mean that you would have gotten the shares and would sell your shares at this point with a certain guarantee on the price, or something else?
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stabilizingbid.asp#:~:t....
There is dilution in a “final” equity round, and then the banks are immediately flipping them to people that believe they are helping the company but are just getting dumped on by the banks, as all help was done by the banks
I theoretically like direct listings more, but I don’t like retails tolerance of getting screwed in a different way because the valuations are unsupportable
I just like exposure and liquidity, so float the shares one way or the other! People should be pragmatic about what they are participating in
No offense to the companies intended, I like both of their products.
As you note, since it was a direct listing and not an IPO, there isn't really an analog to many other companies.
My opinion about why they did a direct listing is because institutional investors didn't want to touch it, and that memetail traders (a portmanteau of meme and retail) are undiscerning at any valuation.
The company didn't sell any shares or make any money from the direct listing itself, so that means the only people that could make money or provide any shares for making a market at all would be existing shareholders that have a lot of shares. It's impossible to levy criticism both ways simultaneously, just to smugly pat yourself on the back, but there are other reasons to.
The other benefit of an IPO (to a trader looking for earliest exposure) is the stabilizing bid from the syndicate, a brief period of more legal market manipulation where a consortium props up the price. A significant reason I avoided Coinbase's attempt at a 100 billion dollar direct listing is because there would be no stabilizing bid and retail doesn't have enough capital to simulate one.