📉 공모주에 기관만 먼저 참여하면 일반 투자자는 손해 아닌가요?

Actually it’s not sketchy, that’s standard IPO stuff. Institutions get early access at lower prices, retail comes in after listing during price discovery. Wall Street’s always worked this way. Crypto just made fair launches feel normal

Happens all the time. It was a very common rug pull scheme during the dotcom boom. I think it's more regulated now but still happens for sure

This is standard process for an IPO. Before a company's stock trades publicly on an exchange, investment banks allocate shares at a set offer price to institutional investors, such as mutual funds, pension funds, and private clients, I wouldn't say for very wealthy as Im offered pre-IPO stocks.

When the stock opens to the general public the next day, retail investors buy shares on the secondary market. If demand is high, the price surges immediately - IPO pop.

it is the established and normal global process for raising capital. Institutional investors secure the lowest price, while retail investors often bear the risk of buying at a premium. This happens in the vast majority of IPOs worldwide, from Wall Street to Zagreb. Retail investors typically receive less than 10% of the initial allocation.

The reason is that institutional investors are the one who are financing companies, so they get discount, if this wasn't done like this, there wouldn't be finance, this is why America is the most successful capital breeder in the world, loads of money willing to go into companies as the payback can cover the cost of all losses, one Amazon can cover thousands of losses.

Im sometimes getting pre IPO offers via my broker and im not anything special..

Here's a simple explanation of why this works and what the "wealthy individuals" are all about:

1. The Bookbuilding Process
Before a stock is available for purchase on the stock exchange for the first time, there's a subscription period.
Who participates? Primarily institutional investors (like banks, insurance companies, or large funds) and sometimes selected clients of underwriting banks.
What happens? These large investors submit bids indicating how many shares they would buy and at what price (within a range).
The Price: At the end of this "bidding process," the issue price is set.

2. Why do they pay less?
It's not that they intentionally receive a "discount," but:
The Risk: These investors buy the shares before the initial stock market price is established. They bear the risk that the share price will fall below the issue price on the first day of trading.
The "IPO pop": When demand is huge, official stock market trading often starts significantly above the issue price. This is the profit the people in the screenshot are referring to – they see that the "big players" bought for, say, €20, but the first price on the stock exchange is €25.

3. "Private placements" – The exclusive round
Sometimes there is no public offering for us ordinary investors at all. This is called a private placement.
In this case, shares are sold directly to a small, invited group of investors.
Advantage for the company: It's cheaper and faster than a large public IPO.
Disadvantage for us: We can only participate once these people later sell their shares on the stock exchange.

Is there anything that can be done about this?
As a private investor with a standard brokerage account, it's often difficult to participate in popular tech IPOs (like Airbnb or Reddit). However, some brokers (such as Consorsbank or some neo-brokers) now offer the option to subscribe to new issues directly. You then have to submit a purchase order within the specified timeframe.