Schwab Bets BIG With $660M Acquisition For Pre-IPO Ponzi Casino…

Every suburban dad with a Schwab account be like: “Yeah I’m in private equity now” LOL

So it appears that Charles Schwab is backing up the brinks truck worth $660 million in straight cash homie to buy Forge Global… the janky online bazaar where people trade pre-IPO shares of companies that don’t actually want to go public. Translation: Schwab, the company who has built an empire convincing sophisticated “joe blow’s” that they are “active traders” now wants to be your gateway to the underground casino of private markets.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, Forge runs a marketplace where employees, founders, and early investors dump their private company stock before the big IPO payday that never comes. Think SpaceX, OpenAI, or whatever AI startup currently promising to “redefine intelligence” while running on AWS credits and Red Bull. The move gives Schwab instant access to the last area of finance it didn’t already monetize… the gray zone between rich-people exclusivity and retail delusion.

(Source: CNBC) 

For more context: Forge went public in 2021 through a SPAC (of course it did), and its stock’s been living in penny-stock purgatory ever since. So Schwab swooped in with a 72% premium and called it “democratizing access to private markets.” In other words, Schwab is letting retail bagholders into the pre-IPO Ponzi one quarter too late. Sounds slimy on the surface… but who cares when everyone is chasing the same drug. Morgan Stanley just bought EquityZen. Goldman’s circling the space. Wall Street’s new business model is simple: if you can’t create alpha, sell access to people who still think they can.

What’s actually interesting about this deal though is that  Forge has handled over $17 billion in private trades, yet it’s been broke since SPAC day. Now Schwab’s buying the illusion of liquidity. A “marketplace” where everyone wants to sell and nobody wants to buy. Sounds legit. In fact, Rick Wurster, Schwab’s CEO, said the deal “furthers our mission to democratize wealth creation.” 

(Source: Giphy) 

What this really means is that Schwab saw retail investors getting bored of ETFs and wanted a new dopamine button. The firm’s been around since the Carter administration… it knows how to sell the dream of insider access to people who still think they’re early. And private markets are the key. For instance, the private markets alone are projected to triple to $13 trillion by 2032. And Schwab just bought the shovel stand outside the gold rush. Bigly. 

Heck, I give it six months before Schwab starts offering “fractional shares of private unicorns”... to which investors will be stepping over themselves to get their hands on. However, in reality… it’ll be a death wish. Why? Because when Wall Street says “exclusive access,” it usually means they’ve already cashed out. Same ole story… different game. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.