“The public markets have really become like a casino.”
That’s how Barry Silbert, the chief executive of SecondMarket, the fast-growing private stock exchange for start-ups, views trading on the big exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
If you don’t know SecondMarket, you should: Whenever you hear about companies like Facebook being valued at as much as $100 billion or Groupon at $15 billion — before they’ve had an initial public offering — the sky-high values are in large part being set on exchanges like SecondMarket, which allow wealthy investors to trade shares of private companies in the secondary market. Think of it as an eBay for shares of private companies.
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