Description: A 2025 sample of 47 large US IPOs, the 15 biggest winners, and the trading days on which their highest closing prices arrived. Plus what that means for Anthropic's planned listing.
An IPO allocation lands in your account. Do you sell on day one, wait a week, or hold until the chart files for permission to enter orbit? Among the 15 strongest performers from a comparable sample of 2025 large US IPOs, the median day of the highest closing price was trading day 52. The fireworks did not necessarily end on opening night. But beware: these winners were identified with hindsight, not predicted beforehand.
How the top 30% were selected
The IPO Arc screener listed 47 US operating-company IPOs from 2025 that raised more than $250 million. We ranked them by their highest closing-price gain relative to the offer price over roughly the first 126 trading sessions, then selected the top 15. That is 31.9% of the sample. Day one is the first exchange trading session, not the pricing date, and weekends and market holidays do not count. Every figure in the distribution uses the daily close, not the intraday high.
Which trading day delivered the peak close?
| Trading days | Companies | n |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1–2 | ███ | 3 |
| Days 3–10 | — | 0 |
| Days 11–20 | ██ | 2 |
| Days 21–60 | █████ | 5 |
| Days 61–126 | █████ | 5 |
Three winners peaked on days one or two; none peaked on days three through ten; two peaked on days 11–20; five on days 21–60; and five on days 61–126. In other words, 10 of the 15 winning names peaked after day 20. That does not make waiting a month a winning strategy: the other 32 IPOs include companies that did not enjoy these gains. You cannot build a reliable horse-racing system by interviewing only the winning horses.
The 15 strongest peak closing gains
| Ticker | Peak close vs offer | Trading day |
|---|---|---|
| CRCL | +749.8% | 12 |
| CRWV | +359.0% | 58 |
| FIG | +269.7% | 2 |
| FIGR | +195.6% | 89 |
| KRMN | +155.9% | 106 |
| MIAX | +121.6% | 64 |
| BLLN | +117.0% | 16 |
| HTFL | +110.1% | 53 |
| LGN | +107.3% | 116 |
| BLSH | +101.7% | 2 |
| HNGE | +89.2% | 52 |
| MPLT | +89.0% | 122 |
| CAI | +87.1% | 46 |
| VOYG | +82.2% | 1 |
| MDLN | +72.4% | 46 |
Ranks use the highest closing gain versus the IPO offer, as displayed by IPO Arc on November 12, 2026. An earlier exploratory tally of 27 deals, nine winners and a day-16 median used an inconsistent universe; the aligned 47/15 sample here replaces it.
A closing-price record is not an intraday spike
Figma priced at $33, closed its first session at $115.50 (+250%), and briefly traded at $124.63. On its second session, it touched $149.92. Circle, offered at $31, hit an intraday $298.99 on June 23, 2025, its twelfth trading day—about 864% over the offer. Those are tradable quotes in theory, not proof that an ordinary investor could execute at the exact top. Without consistent minute-by-minute data for all 47 listings, we cannot responsibly name the clock time at which hot IPOs most often peak.
What changes for Anthropic's proposed IPO?
As of November 12, 2026, Anthropic had filed to list on Nasdaq under ANT, with a preliminary range of $70–$78 and a planned November 19 debut. SBI Securities in Japan showed an application deadline of November 18 at 10:59 JST and a USD funding deadline of 15:00 JST; it accepted requests in one-share increments and at a market-style offer-price subscription only. Allocation at the eventual IPO offer price is different from sending a market order after public trading begins. At a hypothetical 100 shares × $78, the required amount is $7,800, or about ¥1,248,000 if one assumes ¥160 per dollar. Actual exchange rates and allocation can differ.
## OpenAI is a separate story—and so is IPO funding
Anthropic was taking public-offering subscriptions, while OpenAI still had no publicly traded shares available to ordinary investors as of November 12, 2026. OpenAI had confidentially filed preliminary IPO paperwork, but its leadership said in September that it would not float in 2026. Trading private-company stakes among qualified parties is not the same as buying listed shares through a retail brokerage account. Two famous AI names do not automatically make two buy buttons.
An SBI US IPO request is not necessarily an all-or-nothing 100-share lottery: a partial allocation may be possible. The broker requires available buying power in US dollars, not funds left tied up as margin collateral. Money at another bank or brokerage must arrive, and any currency conversion or stock-sale settlement must finish before the deadline. Crucially, the 'market' setting on an IPO subscription means taking the final offer price, not placing an unlimited market buy after shares begin trading. Those two buttons can lead to wildly different bills.
What this retrospective chart cannot promise
We selected the top performers using prices that investors did not know at the IPO. That is hindsight selection, so it must not be mistaken for a forecast. Across US IPOs in 2025, Nasdaq reports a 13% median and 22% average first-day closing gain versus the offer. A strategy built solely from superstar deals ignores the less glamorous outcomes. For a real investment, decide how much downside you can bear, whether to scale out, and how to handle a gap-up opening before it happens. A plan beats begging a candlestick chart for mercy.
The punchline: some blockbuster IPOs peak almost immediately, while others keep climbing for dozens of sessions. In this top-15 sample, the median peak-close day was 52. Predicting the ultimate top and actually locking in a profit are two different sports.
References (8)
- IPO Arc, 2025 US IPO screener, over $250 million, sorted by peak close (checked November 12, 2026): https://www.ipoarc.com/ipos?size=large&sort=-peak&year=2025
- IPO Arc, methodology (daily closing price and trading-day conventions): https://www.ipoarc.com/methodology
- Nasdaq, IPO Market Gained Strength in 2025: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/ipo-market-gained-strength-2025
- Interactive Brokers, Not a Figma of Our Imagination (August 8, 2025): https://www.interactivebrokers.com/campus/traders-insight/securities/stocks/not-a-figma-of-our-imagination/
- MarketWatch, Circle intraday high of $298.99 on June 23, 2025: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/circles-stock-should-be-worth-less-than-half-what-it-is-now-analyst-says-794da220
- Anthropic, IPO roadshow announcement (November 10, 2026): https://www.anthropic.com/news/roadshow-launch
- SBI Securities, Anthropic US IPO subscription terms (November 12, 2026): https://www.sbisec.co.jp/ETGate/?OutSide=on&_ActionID=DefaultAID&_ControlID=WPLETmgR001Control&_DataStoreID=DSWPLETmgR001Mdtl30&_PageID=WPLETmgR001Mdtl30&_scpr=intpr%3Dforeign_ipo_261102_jc_top&burl=search_foreign&cat1=foreign&cat2=ipo&dir=ipo&file=foreign_ipo_261102.html&getFlg=on
- Reuters (September 12, 2026), OpenAI IPO plans: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/openai-ipo-will-not-happen-in-2026-amid-ai-safety-fears-altman-says-4898687
