Last week, Circle Internet Group (CRCL) made a blockbuster IPO debut.

On its first day of trading, the stock surged 168%. By the following day, it was trading 270% above its IPO price of $31.

In other words, anyone who invested at the IPO price could have turned $1,000 into $3,700 in just two days. Not bad!

Now, what if I told you that you could have been one of those early investors in Circle, with no special requirements or insider connections?

For decades, individuals have been locked out of the IPO process while accredited investors and institutions grabbed these explosive first-day gains. But that’s all changing.

Newer brokerages like Robinhood are quietly handing you the same access that was once reserved for Wall Street's inner circle.

A member of our research team, James, was able to use a Robinhood trading account to get in early on the Circle IPO. And he’s here to walk you through exactly how it worked.

I’ll pass it over to James now so he can tell you all about it so you don’t miss out on the next one.

How to Grab IPO Shares Before Everyone Else

By James Welch

As Enrique mentioned, I was able to participate in the Circle IPO on Thursday as a regular retail investor simply because I have a trading account with Robinhood.

First, a quick bit of background. I recently switched over to Robinhood because I was frustrated with Schwab for not offering interest on my cash balance.

I went to mostly cash just before “Liberation Day.” And not earning interest on those funds was driving me nuts.

Then I read somewhere that Robinhood was offering a 4.5% APR on cash balances if you paid $5 per month for their “gold” account. That was all it took for me to make the leap.

Unlike Schwab, Robinhood’s site and app are very visual. To my surprise, one of the features I quickly discovered was called “IPO Access”.

As you can imagine, I immediately clicked on it. Being locked out of IPOs because I’m just a retail investor has always ticked me off.

It turns out that Robinhood has been offering its members the chance to opt into featured IPOs as far back as May 2021 — before Robinhood was even a publicly traded company itself.

And when the company did go public later that year, Robinhood offered an unprecedented 35% of its IPO shares to its users.

That made history as the largest portion ever designated for retail investors in a traditional underwritten offering.

Here are some of the companies they’ve offered “IPO Access” to:

As you can see, there are some big names on the list. I counted 24 companies on their list of completed IPO offerings.

So, you may be wondering, how does it work?

Well, it was really quite simple from a user perspective. I signed up for IPO alerts within the platform. On May 27, I received a notification that Circle was going public soon.

Clicking on the notification brought me to an internal web page that offered details about the company, the initial share offering range, plus a link to a prospectus and other info.

After doing some research for a few days, I decided to go for it. So I clicked back into the page. From there, I was able to enter as many shares as I liked.

The platform made sure to inform me that the funds would be held from my cash balance until the IPO date.

It also explained that I may get all, some, or none of the shares I’d opted in for based on demand versus the shares they had to allocate.

As you can see in the screenshot, I requested 100 shares. The original asking price range was $27-$28, but they wisely built in a 20% buffer you must agree to.

This protects you from getting priced out if the share prices increase due to demand. So, how did it go?

Well, I waited until the morning of the IPO, and I eventually got another notification in my account.

I ended up getting only 19 shares at $31. Sure, I was a little disappointed. But I have absolutely zero complaints. In fact, I feel quite grateful to Robinhood for the opportunity.

I’m grateful for the quick increase in share price, of course. But I’m even more grateful that Robinhood gave me, an average retail investor, access to one of the biggest IPOs of the year.

Better yet, Robinhood hooked up a lot of other investors just like me that day. As you can see in the image above, I was the 39,660th investor that day to get shares.

To be clear, we’re not here to sell you on Robinhood — or any platform, for that matter. But it’s clear that something big is shifting.

Brokerages like Robinhood, Fidelity, and Webull are quietly breaking down one of Wall Street’s longest-standing barriers: IPO access.

That means everyday investors now have a shot at buying shares at the same price institutions pay before the big day-one pop.

If you’re serious about growing your wealth, this is something worth paying attention to.

So, check if your brokerage offers IPO access. If not, consider opening an account with one that does. Set up alerts. Keep cash on hand. And above all, stay ready.

Because the next breakout IPO could be here soon.