The Stock Exchanges are running, the freshmen are reviewed around Wall Street. From here to New Year's Eve they will make their debut: DoorDash, the food delivery giant grown in the months of the pandemic; Airbnb, the platform for short-term rentals, on the contrary victim of the lockdown in the USA as in Europe; the video game platform Roblox, sustained in recent months by the limitations on mobility and "physical" entertainment. In the end Wish, an e-commerce platform online together with C3.ai, founded by Tom Siebel, legendary Oracle executive who sets up on his own and Affirm Holding, a company that allows installment payments.
In 2020, the debuts on the price list will bear fruit the record figure of 156 billion, the best result ever, better than 2014, when the Chinese giant Alibaba arrived on the stock exchange. Speaking of China, it must be said that investors have absorbed the disappointment of the non-listing of the Ant group in record time, as demonstrated by the success of the IPO of JD Health, the healthcare arm of one of the Dragon's online giants, which attracted reservations for an amount 50 higher than the offer.
Ma Wall Street, despite the Asian boom, remains the main point of reference for world approval for risk investment, both the Bull and the push of the Robinhooders, the small speculators who have rediscovered the Stock Exchange thanks to commission-free trading sites. Two tribes that mingle in front of the terminals, as demonstrated by the case of Doordash, the company founded in 2019 by some Stanford students which today, after dizzying growth, distributes cooked dishes from over 340 cafeterias scattered in over 4 cities between the USA, Canada and Australia. It's hard to justify such a development with the sheer talent of budding entrepreneurs like Tony Xu. And indeed behind the success there are the capitals of Sequoia and other private equity in addition to the hand of Vision Fund, the financial arm of Japanese giant Softbank which has just announced its intention to accelerate the recovery on the markets after the misadventures of September. Under his urging, the colossus that relies on the use of riders (between judicial disputes and trade union conflicts) is aiming for a stock market value of 32,4 billion dollars after having placed securities for 3,4 billion today. From the operation Softbank, controlled by Masayoshi Son, will obtain a valuation of 6,5 billion.
This is also why the appetites for Airbnb have grown. The company, hit hard by the lockdown but survived thanks to short-term rentals to residents, last Monday raised its valuation from 35 billion to 40 billion in view of the IPO on Thursday 10 December in which it won't raise more than $3 billion anyway. The recovery of tourism or, more generally, of travel-related activities, is still far away, even in Asia where the pandemic seems to be under control even before the vaccines: a cruise that left Singapore two days ago, the first after the stop decreed in March, it's already over because there is a positive on board the ship. All XNUMX passengers were quarantined in their cabins.
A nice cancellation: but perhaps the ticket included the use of Robox, the robotic boxing game that has climbed the Playstation charts.
