Published in MarketWatch on December 14, 2020

Still, said Treyton DeVore, a financial planner at Piertree Planning in Kansas City, Mo., you should treat a possible Airbnb share purchase like other stock purchases. “Do your research, look at competitors, and understand what you’re investing in with the thought that quarantine and lockdowns won’t last forever,” he said. “There’s always a lot of hype around IPOs. Don’t let FOMO push you into buying a stock just because everybody else is.”

A retail investor buying Airbnb — or any newly issued stock — should know from the start that investing in an IPO is no get-rich-quick scheme. “The biggest winners in IPOs are generally the early investors who invested in the company before the IPO,” DeVore said.

Even big payoffs that do materialize take time. People who bought up shares of Snap SNAP, 2.11%, the company behind Snapchat, had to wait more than three years even to break even on their IPO purchases, DeVore said. (The company is up 200% in 2020.)

So that’s why a buy-and-hold perspective is vital for anyone who wants to own Airbnb stock, according to IPO and investment experts.

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