A total of 54 SPACs went public in U.S. collectively raising approximately $9.90 billion in gross proceeds (included exercised overallotment/greenshoe options) as of Q1 2022. SPAC IPO activity slowed down significantly compared to Q4 2021 with an average of 18 SPAC IPO issuance per month and an average deal size of $183 million.

A total of 613 SPACs went public in U.S. collectively raising approximately $161.68 billion in gross proceeds for the year of 2021. SPAC IPO issuance significantly picked up toward year-end (Q4) with an average 55 SPAC IPOs raising an average $201.32 billion per month (included exercised overallotment/greenshoe options).

We set out in this study to examine whether investors can improve their investment opportunity sets through the addition of an IPO index portfolio into various sets of benchmark portfolios. Using the IPOX indices from the years 1980–2006, we find that adding an IPO index portfolio does lead to a statistically significant enlargement of the investment opportunity set for investors.