I got lucky in the Reddit ipo. I had decent karma so I got invited for their special insider track. But I had to create a new account via a link shared by Reddit. Got what I asked for.

But otherwise yes it goes as described above.

To further emphasize this, it is very challenging to get in a pre-auction allocation.

You can submit an order via your broker (depending on the broker and your account) to the auction itself on the exchange once it’s in the quotation phase.

Not that I would advocate for that. Sometimes it’s better to buy in the secondary market once things settle a bit.

Reminder that hot IPOs, in this era, rarely do a great job at getting returns for the investor - its more a mechanism to reward long term private investors, employees and the book runner.