(Bloomberg) -- Six months’ salary in a single day. That’s the kind of payoff China’s boom in initial public offerings is handing to a lucky few.
Seven new listings this year have generated profits of more than 100,000 yuan ($14,900) for retail investors who secured an allocation of 500 shares and sold on debut day, the most such windfalls in at least six years. Stacy Wei did even better: her winning bid for Unitree Robotics earned her about 380,000 yuan, enough to upgrade to her dream car.
Wei, who works in education in one of China’s biggest cities, beat odds of one in 5,525 to secure shares in the Unitree Robotics deal last month. She sold as the stock soared on its first day, pocketing enough to walk away from a deposit she had already paid on a cheaper car.
Chinese traders have a name for IPOs like Unitree: “big fat tickets,” referring to listings that can deliver more than 100,000 yuan from a single winning allocation. This year has produced an unusually large crop of them, fueling a rush for new shares even as soaring demand makes allocations increasingly difficult to secure.
For China’s roughly 250 million retail investors, winning an IPO allocation has long offered an unusually reliable route to quick profits. But 2026 is shaping up as an exceptional year. Enthusiasm for technology listings championed by Beijing has sent first-day returns to one of the highest on record: the 53 stocks that started trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen this year surged more than 350% on average on debut, weighted by deal size, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.