Stock for sale! Who wants some?!

Equity supply’s a hot topic in 2026. Maybe you noticed. I’ve written voluminously on the subject.

I won’t put you through a 2,000-word recapitulatory monologue. Not here anyway. Besides, this is a pretty simple narrative at its core.

The short version says that between “ultra”-cap AI IPOs, follow-ons from hyper-scalers seeking to “diversify” their funding mix after selling more than $200 billion in debt since September and slower buyback growth as some of those same mega-spenders devote free cash flow to capex, net equity supply might be positive this year, next and beyond.

If that’s the way it turns out, it’ll be a sea change — a “potential paradigm shift away from what had been the virtuous 15-year ‘de-equitization’ period where the float was shrunk and vol suppressed,” as Nomura’s Charlie McElligott put it late last month.

With that in mind, consider the figure below, from Goldman’s Ben Snider.

As the chart header notes, Q2 2026 was a record quarter for equity issuance.

I waited to highlight that visual, which accompanied Snider’s July 10 weekly. Why wait? Well, because I wanted to see how much money Wall Street made underwriting all that supply.

Now, following this week’s reports from the big banks, we have an idea. Here’s the chart:

Between them, the big five made $3.63 billion in ECM fees, more than a billion higher than analysts expected.

That’s what happens when new supply exceeds a quarter trillion across IPOs, follow-ons, converts and SPACs, as it did in Q2. That eclipsed the old record set during the “stimmy”-fueled meme mania in 2021.

And to think: OpenAI and Anthropic are yet to go public.