As investors kick off a new year, there are plenty of momentous market occasions to reflect on and look ahead to. While 2022 is shaping up to be another potentially record year of IPOs, last year was one for the books. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Dec. 13, 2021, Fool contributors Danny Vena, Asit Sharma, Rachel Warren, and Jason Hall discuss the year in review. 10 stocks we like better than WalmartWhen our award-winning analyst team has an investing tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* They just revealed what they believe are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Walmart wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. See the 10 stocks Stock Advisor returns as of 6/15/21 Danny Vena: This year has been one like no other. In terms of IPOs, it doesn't matter what metric that you rely on. 2021 has been a record-breaking year. According to Bloomberg, in 2021, the worldwide IPO haul is the biggest on record. Now, this is as of November 19, so this is a few weeks old now already, 2,850 businesses and special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs, have raised more than $600 billion worldwide. That crushed the previous record of $420 billion that was set back in 2007. The year isn't even over yet. Asit Sharma, tell us what you think about that. Asit Sharma: Well I think the emphasis for me is on the idea of this being a global record. Certainly, we want to adjust it a little bit for inflation, maybe those 2007 dollars were worth a little more than today's dollars, but all the same. It's a stupendous achievement, especially given that we just have come off of a pandemic. But it also calls to mind that there's some accelerated trends in investment. I think the pandemic accelerated investment into biotech, we've seen a lot of medical focused companies come to market. It accelerated this whole idea of digital transformation. I know Rachel has been joining me with a couple of other Fools who have been talking about this every Tuesday night on a show called Virtual Opportunities. But if you look at the composition of global IPOs, just let's take that 2007 year, you'll see that they were highly concentrated in the U.S. That still stands today. The U.S. still takes the lion's share of the issues. But I've been watching the Indian market and they're having a banner year. We're seeing capital flow to the private sector in places like India, as China becomes a little bit of a harder environment to invest in. It's a country with over a billion people, English-speaking country with a lot of technology, a lot of engineers, computer scientists, so they're drawing capital for unicorns that are just waiting to go public on the Indian markets and also in global markets. This is just one example of this trend, I think the U.S. remains the biggest attracter of capital flows for companies that are going to go public via direct listing, IPO, SPAC, you name it. But in the future, we'll see that there's a wide roll of technology that is ripe to come public. Israel is another great example of that, as a small country that punches way over its weight in terms of attractiveness, capital, and bringing companies public. What I take out of all of this is for those who think, maybe the time to invest in IPOs is gone by now. I think it's here to stay. I think Danny's going to be busy for years to come with this focus on new issues. [laughs] Vena: One of the other things that I wanted to maybe tap your brain about is when we look at the pandemic and the fact that it attracted so many new retail investors into the fold, do you think that that helped to contribute to the excitement around IPOs and the growth in IPOs over the past year or two? Sharma: Personally, I do. We tend to think of IPOs as this value chain that's driven by venture capitalists. Venture capitalist has to fund the idea and a humble founder, group of founders has this great journey and then it hits the public markets. But without us people, without the retail investors, if you only had institutional investors, that ain't happening. We are actually the attracter of all this capital. Ultimately, it is us and our ability and appetite to invest that it is the fuel behind the whole ecosystem. I think you're on to something there Danny, I think the fact that people had so much time at home and some of us had stimulus money definitely played into that. It excites everybody, it excites the people with deep pockets, it excites people who are ready to come to market, who've been private companies. Yes, we play a big role in this, us individual retail investors. Vena: Rachel, what are your thoughts on the recent IPO phenomenon? Rachel Warren: I think it's really fascinating. It's interesting because I was reading an article today on Fortune. It was talking about basically despite the record number of IPOs we've seen this year, about half of the companies that have become newly public in 2021 are trading below their IPO price. It's interesting because we have had this incredibly volatile year, although if you look back over the whole year as a whole, it's been a pretty good year for the stock market. I think despite this trend, we're still seeing more and more investors getting in. I think you have interest that's fueled by the accessibility of apps like Robinhood that make it really, really easy for people to invest. I think that's drawing a lot of individuals from my generation, from the younger generation, who maybe haven't entered the market before. I think another thing we're seeing is more and more investors have been interested in the market over the last year as you've seen a lot of interest in investments like crypto or NFTs or meme stocks. While some of these may not be advisable investments, I do think it's fueling more interest in the broader market. I don't think it's surprising that you're seeing a lot more activity around these IPOs. I think it's exciting and I think it's just should definitely encourage investors that the market's moving in a good direction. Jason Hall: I've been thinking a lot about what we've seen over the past few years with the increase in IPOs, this advent of the SPAC, where it's gone from just a burgeoning thing to just this explosion of the number of SPACs, we're seeing that fall over the past quarter. As we come into the end of the year, I read an article talking about how we've seen a couple of blank check companies like eight or 10 are canceling their SPAC, they're stopping it for various reasons. I think it's this really interesting period of time. Asit was talking about the idea that the venture capitals fund the idea and then when the business gets to sustainability, that's typically when you see it go public. I think a big failure of the regulatory environment and also so many of the deals that have been SPACs over the past few years is it's been retail investors funding the idea, [laughs] so many more of these businesses, including the one that I'm going to talk about later in the show, AppHarvest. An incredible idea, so, so early to becoming public. We've seen more of that happen with these operational businesses versus just biotech start-ups and pharma start-ups. To me, I think that's the biggest thing that nobody is really talking about is how many SPACs are SPACs too early? Vena: Or even companies that maybe they didn't deserve to be SPACs in the first place. Hall: Not arguing with you there, buddy.Asit Sharma owns AppHarvest, Inc. Danny Vena has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Jason Hall has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Rachel Warren has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends AppHarvest, Inc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.Source