SCHW
Retail wants in, and Schwab brought a bigger door
The private-market game is starting to look less like a velvet-rope club and more like a mall kiosk with a line around the block. According to the article, Charles Schwab is now part of a setup that lets retail customers get exposure to pre-IPO names like SpaceX and Anthropic through new products tied to Forge Global.
That matters because Schwab isn’t exactly a niche player. With 46 million clients and about $12 trillion in assets, it’s basically a firehose of everyday investor money. If Schwab can keep opening the gate to private-company exposure, that’s a big distribution advantage — and a potentially huge new lane for fees, assets, and trading activity.
The other side of the trade
Here’s the part that would make your inner cynic nod: several VCs at the All-In Liquidity Summit openly said they’re happy to sell into this demand. Brad Gerstner and Jason Calacanis both described secondary sales as a way to keep returning money to LPs while retail buys the dream on the other side.
And the numbers are starting to look a little frothy:
- Secondary market volume is running at roughly double the 2021 peak.
- Employee secondaries at names like Anthropic, Anduril, and SpaceX now make up 31% of all primary venture activity in 2025.
- Shares are reportedly trading around a 6% premium to last round prices, which is a far cry from the post-ZIRP “please take this off our hands” era.
Why investors should care
If Schwab is successful here, it could become a bigger player in the booming private-markets pipeline. That’s good for growth, but it also raises the classic question: are everyday investors getting access to the next breakout, or just becoming the cleanest exit liquidity on the street?
Big picture: Schwab may be building a shiny new on-ramp to private markets — but every on-ramp has an off-ramp, and somebody’s usually driving away with the gains.