Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Figure 1. Number of publicly listed companies

This figure shows the total number of companies listed on the NASDAQ, NYSE, and AMEX stock exchanges from 1973 to December 2021. The number of companies trended up fairly steadily from the late 1970s through 1997 (with a small dip in the late 1980s), from below 5000 in 1975 to around 8000 in 1997. Then the number of companies trended down through 2012, and was fairly flat—just above about 4000 companies, through the first half of 2020. From the first half of 2020 to December 2021, the number of companies increased to about 5300.

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Figure 2. Monthly percent change of traded companies, by exchange

This figure shows a 12-month moving average of the monthly percent change in the number of companies listed on 1) the NASDAQ stock exchange and on 2) the NYSE and AMEX stock exchanges. The monthly percent change for the NASDAQ was usually positive and ranging between about 0 an about 2 percent from around 1975 to around 1997. From 1997 to mid-2000, the monthly percent change was usually negative and ranging between about 0 and about -1.5 percent. Starting in about mid-2000, the monthly percent change started to rise substantially, ant was about 2 percent by the end of 2021. The monthly percent change in the NYSE and AMEX stock exchanges was slightly negative most years from 1973 to about 1992, positive and between about 0 and about 1 percent from 1992 to 1997, and then usually negative and between about 0 and -1 percent from 1997 to early 2020. Beginning in 2020, the monthly growth rate surged, to about 1 percent by the end of 2021.

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Figure 3. SPACs and non-SPAC entrants

This graph shows the monthly level of SPAC and non-SPAC entrants to the NASDAQ, NYSE and AMEX stock exchanges. Both SPACs and non-SPACs showed considerably growth in the second half of 2020 through 2021, with the largest number of SPAC IPOs occurring in March and April 2021 (over 100 SPAC IPOs a month) and the largest number of non-SPAC IPOs occurred in July 2021. The total number of IPOs per month trended up from less than 50 in June 2021 to about 100 in December 2021.

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Figure 4. SPAC return behavior around announcement

This figure shows trends for stock returns of SPACs that entered the market between September 2020 and December 2021 and completed a merger with a private company to become an operating company. The chart shows the median daily stock return and the interdecile range of the daily stock return from 50 days before a merger announcement to 200 days after the merger announcement. Stock returns showed very little volatility in the days preceding the merger deal announcement, with a narrow interdecile range and a median range close to zero. On the announcement day, the volatility of returns spikes up significantly and then slowly declines to the pre-announcement level. As the fraction of De-SPAC increase, starting around day 75 after deal announcement, stock returns volatility rises again. The chart also includes a line showing the fraction of SPACs in the group that had become an operating company as of a given number of days after merger announcement. The fraction begins to climb slowly from zero from about 50 days aft er deal announcement to around 80 days after deal announcement. Then between around 80 and around 125 days after announcement, the fraction of companies completing the merger rose sharply, from about 0.15 to almost 0.80. By 150 days after merger announcement, about 90 percent had completed the merger and by 200 days, all companies in the sample had completed the merger.

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