Oh, it’s good to be back.

Movie buffs may associate that line with Robert Downey as he Tony Starked his way down to Earth in 2010’s “Iron Man 2,” but investors are more likely to be thinking of this year’s market for initial public offerings. 

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As of Aug. 21 the Renaissance IPO Index was up 11.7% year-to-date, while the S&P 500 was up 9.2%. The investment firm said that 143 IPOs have priced this year, up 55.4% from a year ago.

The IPO market was in a bit of a slump in the spring when President Donald Trump unannounced his ever-changing tariff regimen.

“The IPO market hit a speed bump with Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff announcement,” said Jay R. Ritter, finance professor at the University of Florida.

The famous Wall Street bronze sculpture ‘Charging Bull.’

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“But the continued rise of the stock market, and investor enthusiasm for stocks that are AI-, crypto- or fintech-related, has brought the IPO market back to a relatively normal level of activity, after a boom in 2021 and a huge slowdown in 2022-2024,” he added.

Morgan Stanley: IPO market is back

Ritter, aka “Mr. IPO,” said that many penny-stock IPOs have priced in the past two years, none of them are underwritten by the major firms.

“The penny stock IPOs are typically priced at $4 per share and raise only about $6 million,” he said. “They are sold to unsophisticated retail investors. There are also some underwriters that do a lot of [special-purpose acquisition company] IPOs. The SPAC IPOs are mainly purchased by a group of hedge funds.”

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In the past several years, especially post-Covid-19 in 2022 and 2023, IPO activity has been more muted as higher interest rates resulted in lower company valuations and stock prices, Morgan Stanley noted in a July 29 report.

“From a sentiment standpoint we’re back, if not even better than where we were at the beginning of the year,” said Eddie Molloy, global co-head of equity capital markets at Morgan Stanley. “It sets up for what we hope is an exciting second half and an even more active 2026.”

One of the biggest players in the IPO game, Morgan Stanley  (MS)  is also a holding in TheStreetPro’s portfolio.

The firm said it served as lead or joint lead bookrunner on nine of the 15 biggest IPOs in the Americas, measured by money raised, in the last 12 months. They spanned technology, industrials, financials, real estate and consumer sectors.

Morgan Stanley has acted as lead underwriter for several IPOs this year, particularly in the tech sector.

The list includes such names as Klarna KLAR, a Swedish fintech and e-commerce company; Black Rock Coffee Bar BRCB; and Via Transportation VIA, which provides public transit technology.

The firm was the lead bookrunner of the IPO for the artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave  (CRWV) , followed by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Fund manager notes Morgan Stanley’s IPO activity

Ritter said that the larger IPOs all had multiple bookrunners, but some were more important than others.

The underwriters generally don’t compete on fees— deals of $30 million to $200 million almost always have a gross spread of exactly 7%, he noted.

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“Morgan Stanley has teams with expertise in many industries,” Ritter added. “If a CEO hires Morgan Stanley, the top executives normally get access to Morgan Stanley’s wealth management people, which can allow the executives to invest in private deals not available to the general public.”

Morgan Stanley’s bankers said that they expected stronger IPO activity across sectors and geographies in the second half of 2025 and in 2026.

TheStreetPro’s lead portfolio manager, Chris Versace, cited reports that MS was one of the investment firms that Nvidia-backed  (NVDA)  Lambda has hired to prepare for its IPO, along with JP Morgan and Citi.

Versace said Lambda provided hardware and services for artificial intelligence hyperscalers (the big providers of cloud services and infrastructure), labs and other enterprises. Lambda clients include Amazon  (AMZN) , Nvidia and Microsoft  (MSFT) .

“As those transactions come to market, we fully intend on revisiting our current $150 target” on Morgan Stanley stock, he said. “For folks that are underweight MS shares, we’ll repeat the comments we made in the August Monthly Roundup — we currently see a compelling risk-to-reward entry point near $130.”

Morgan Stanley shares are up nearly 18% this year and have climbed 53% from 2024. At last check the stock was trading at $147.75.

“The next catalyst for MS shares will be when Dan Simkowitz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, presents at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference on Sept. 10,” Versace said.

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