Hi, I'm Dan Premack and welcome to Axios Recap, brought to you by Morgan Stanley.

Today is Wednesday, February 10th. The impeachment trial is in session.

Middle seats are still out on Delta, and we're talking about the SPAC boom.

The most significant stock market story of 2021 isn't really the one about Robin Hood and Reddit and GameStop.

It's the one about SPACs, those blank check acquisition companies that are multiplying like gremlins after a midnight snack. If you don't know how a SPAC works, here's the simple explanation.

It's a shell company,

something that really just exists on paper, without a product or revenue, put together by a few sophisticated investors, or maybe by a company. For example, the serial maker post holdings

created one just yesterday. The goal of a SPAC is to buy an actual company, a privately held one,

and to afford it, the SPAC raises money via an initial public offering, an IPO. And then the SPAC

goes hunting for a target. Usually it's got about two years to get that done. And if successful,

the acquired company slips into that shell, becoming a public company itself.

And the people who manage the SPAC get a pretty nice payday.

Oh, and one more thing. Spacks aren't new.

They've been around for decades, basically with the same structure.

What is new, though, is the number of SPACs.

Dozens of new ones formed each and every week, sometimes even a dozen in a single

day, and investors are going nuts for them. CNBC created an index tracking the 50 largest

SPACs that haven't yet announced a takeover deal, and they're up nearly 14% just in 2021. Again, up nearly

14% for empty shell companies. Is it a boom? Is it a bubble? Both?

To try to answer those questions, we're going to be joined by Victoria Grace, who recently formed a

$300 million SPAC with an all-female management team. It's called Queen's Gambit Growth Capital,

because when there's so many SPACs out there, it can pay to have a memorable name.

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