This week was looking so thin on Monday that I wanted to wait until we got a little more clarification on the schedule to see if anything interesting got added. Not much, but there are some potential plays out there, so let’s take a look at the IPOs for Thursday and Friday.

Finwise Bancorp (FINW) – August 12, 2021 | 4.13M Shares
The first of two rather small local banks to go public this week, I don’t know much about banking or picking bank stocks, but I do understand that banks make money by lending money to businesses and individuals, and as long as they make smart loans, they earn profits on their interest. Both of these banks this week apparently have done a good job of that over the past year, despite depressed interest rates, and have relatively low floats. This one is a little bigger, and operates out of Utah. Not sure exactly how I’m gonna play these – may just watch and take notes, but don’t really expect them to do much one way or the other.

Southern States Bancshares (SSBK) – August 12, 2021 | 2M Shares
Here’s the other small community bank I mentioned – much smaller float, so if there’s any demand for these IPOs, I would expect the smaller float to put more pressure on demand. So if I do end up playing either of these, I’ll probably lean towards this one. Gonna gauge the market a bit in the morning, and see if there’s any social chatter, but it does sort of feel like I’d be forcing myself to play these out of boredom, which is usually a better reason to leave them alone and work on other things, but I’m undecided at this point.

Pasithea Therapeutics (KTTA) – August 13, 2021 | 2.89M Shares
Pre-clinical treatments for depressive disorders, with a primary focus on intravenous infusions of ketamine, and the establishment of anti-depression clinics across the UK. Treating depression is poised to be big business, but I’m not sure where this company fits into the bigger infrastructure of healthcare solutions that are addressing this problem, and they sound pretty small and unproven at this point. Not really wanting to get stuck in something that could drop pretty hard off the debut.

Aspire Global (ASPG) – August 13, 2021 | 15M Shares
Making its third appearance in a row on the IPO calendar, this one is an OEM for vaping products that are manufactured in China and sold primarily in the USA and Canada. Given the climate for Chinese based IPOs, and the fact that this one is still available for pre-order on WeBull, I’m gonna guess that demand isn’t there, and would be surprised if this one even goes live this week at all. If it does, I see no reason to get involved.

RenovoRx (RNXT) – August 13, 2021 | 1.55M Shares
A clinical-stage biopharma that is developing a method for targeting chemotherapy to isolated segments of the vascular anatomy closest to tumors, and force chemo across the blood vessel wall to concentrate the chemotherapy onto hard-to-reach tumors. Sounds cool, but I don’t know anything about how feasible or revolutionary this is, and biotechs generally have not been safe bets in my experience. However, with just 1.55M shares, this one might be intersting to watch. I’ll still probably stay out.

Dermata Therapeutics (DRMA) – August 13, 2021 | 1.875M Shares
This is a clinical-stage biotech that creates acne treatments from naturally growing freshwater sponges, and has reported positive Phase 2b data as recently as January 21, 2021. As I’ll say again and again, I don’t know anything about biotechs, but this one does seem kind of interesting. Might take a small gamble play on this one just for fun.

EzFill Holdings (EZFL) – August 13, 2021 | 6.25M Shares
Alright, so finally a non-bank, non-biotech IPO this week… with a relatively low float to match! Unfortunately, the underwriter happens to be ThinkEquity Group, whose IPOs have not been all that spectacular, and the business of EzFill is simply to fill up gas tanks on a delivery model. They’re losing tons of money despite doubling sales and the margins on delivering fuel are pretty tiny. It’s not a very sexy business model to me, and seems like it would be pretty expensive to personally deliver gas to people’s homes or businesses: all while the world seems to be transitioning to electric vehicles. Will watch this one from the sidelines.

NOTE: I’m not a financial advisor and this isn’t financial advice. I may or may not take a position in the equities mentioned in this newsletter, and encourage you to make up you own mind when risking trades on the stock market. Good luck!