Chime made a successful public debut on the Nasdaq Thursday as shares of the fintech name popped 37% — one of many wins for the IPO market in June. Chime’s high-profile initial public offering came on the heels of space tech company Voyager Technologies and stablecoin issuer Circle debuting on Wednesday and last Thursday , respectively. Voyager surged 82% on its first day; Circle flew 168%. Other deals also are in the pipeline, with forthcoming listings from crypto exchange Gemini and cancer diagnostics firm Caris Life Sciences, which is targeting a valuation of up to $5.3 billion. The string of strong IPOs — with companies “upsizing” their deals due to strong investor demand and the first-day stock pops — is not going unnoticed, according to Jim Cramer. As more companies successfully go public, Jim believes others will be emboldened to do the same. And that should mean further upside for the investment banking divisions within Club holdings Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. “The market’s saying, ‘Listen, these companies can raise some money,’ and I think we’ll see scores more coming public,” Jim said Wednesday , forecasting more public listings in sectors like space and quantum computing. Last week, he also described Goldman as being “very attractive right here” due to more deals on the horizon for Wall Street banks. So far, a rebound does look promising. There has already been eight IPOs in June, on track to outpace the 12 that occurred in the entire month of May, according to Renaissance Capital , a provider of IPO-focused research and ETFs. “This is the moment that the massive backlog of unicorns have been waiting for,” Matt Kennedy, a senior IPO market strategist at Renaissance, said in an interview Thursday. He continued, “It’s been years since investors have felt FOMO like this. People are beginning to realize that there’s real money to be made in the IPO market again.” To be sure, Israel’s attack on Iran early Friday morning local time has ratcheted up geopolitical tensions, which could lead to considerable volatility in financial markets if sustained or further escalated. Heightened market volatility — and uncertainty about the economy more broadly — can cause companies to rethink their plans to go public, at least temporarily. Those very dynamics have contributed to the rockier-than-expected start to 2025 for the IPO market. After years of lackluster dealmaking activity due to macroeconomic uncertainty and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, 2025 was supposed to be a boom year. Then came President Donald Trump’s embrace of aggressive tariffs, punctuated by the unveiling of sweeping “reciprocal” duties in early April. Trump’s tariffs upended global markets and caused a number of companies to delay their IPOs. But as Trump has backed off his steepest tariff rates and the stock market recovered from its sell-off, it has breathed life into the IPO market again. Brazilian meat giant JBS went public Friday , a day later than planned, and the market reaction was subdued amid the broader sell-off in stocks on geopolitical concerns. Less than halfway through the year, there’s been 89 IPOs so far in 2025, tracking ahead of the 150 observed in all of 2024, according to Renaissance data. There were 180 IPOs in 2022 and 2023 combined as the market cooled off from the extraordinary 397 public debuts seen in 2021, Renaissance data shows. At the same time, the total number of public offerings doesn’t give the full picture of health for the IPO market because these figures also include smaller deals. “Still, I think that 2025 will end up being a bigger year than 2024,” Kennedy said. “That was not at all apparent a month or two ago during what I call ‘the dark days of early April’ when the market was falling apart and investors wouldn’t touch IPOs.” GS YTD mountain Goldman Sachs (GS) year-to-date performance A better second half of 2025 for public offerings would be welcome news for investors in banks such as Goldman Sachs, which relies heavily on dealmaking revenues. In fact, a rebound in Goldman’s investment banking business is a key reason why we started a position in the financial stock last year. The more clients that tap Goldman for its advisory and underwriting services, the more fee-based revenues the bank will garner. Wells Fargo derives revenues from these services as well — albeit much less than Goldman. The bulk of Wells’ profits come from interest-based income. However, investment banking is a key growth area for Wells Fargo, especially now that its $1.95 trillion asset cap has been lifted. At an industry conference this week, CFO Mike Santomassimo said Wells Fargo is seeing “green shoots in terms of deals” because its growing capital markets business was “the most constrained” from its seven-year-long regulatory punishment. “That business will have more flexibility now that the asset cap is gone,” Santomassimo said. Fees from investment banking diversify Wells Fargo’s revenue streams further so the bank is not as reliant on interest-based income, which is at the mercy of the Fed’s monetary policy choices. WFC YTD mountain Wells Fargo (WFC) year-to-date performance Escalating tensions in the Middle East is not the only risk for IPOs in 2025. Trump’s unpredictable trade policy announcements could cause panic again, making companies think twice about going public and causing investors to be more conservative with their capital. “Although it looks like we’re gaining momentum, I would qualify and say that we don’t know exactly what the tariff outlook will be a month from now,” Kennedy said. “That can change very rapidly as we’ve seen, so I think that still has the potential to upend the market.” IPOs aren’t the only kind of deals that experts say are on the upswing. Mergers and acquisitions activity also has improved lately as Wall Street concludes the impact of Trump’s trade policies might not be as bad as feared, according Roger Altman, the founder and senior chairman of investment bank Evercore ISI. “I think there’s a sense that some of that pent-up demand is beginning to express itself,” Altman said on CNBC Thursday. “I don’t want to overdo this: There’s no boom occurring, but I think there’s a bit of a pickup.” (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long WFC, GS. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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A 2025 IPO market rebound is underway. Banks should gear up to ride the wave
