what’s new in the stock market in 2022 literally not much beyond a sea of red initial public offerings have been sparse this year as the federal reserve looks to tighten financial conditions and cool inflation at 40year highs followon offerings when public companies sell additional shares to raise funds also have fallen off dramatically following several monster years of new stock issuance only about 40 billion of new us stock has been issued so far this year see chart versus more than 1 trillion in the past two years combined according to epfr informa financial intelligence last year at this time there was 227 billion of new stock issuance up from 793 billion in the same stretch of 2020 according to epfr analyst winston chua who said sparse new stock issuance could be providing a bit of support for equities despite broader market tumult the trickle of stock issuance comes as big us companies also have been borrowing less in the bond market in 2022 in part as debt costs rise from pandemic lows see ipo market outlook is ‘foggy’ heading into second quarter as falling returns at yearend and war in europe dampens risk appetite “there are a lot of reasons why ipos are down” said randy frederick managing director of trading and derivatives at schwab center for financial research pointing to global instability tied to russia’s war in ukraine high inflation and rising interest rates as factors “there’s also been a fair amount of talk of recession” frederick said despite the robust labor market there’s also been a painful rout in technology stocks a key source of megaipos in the past few years and poor performance of “blankcheck companies” or special purpose acquisition companies which were hot in recent years of peak pandemic stimulus “spacs were huge this past year but most of them haven’t done well” frederick said “with all of those factors it’s been death by a thousand paper cuts for the ipo market” stocks tumbled friday for a second straight day as a fresh batch of corporate earnings largely disappointed the dow jones industrial average djia  sp 500 spx and nasdaq composite index comp each off about 2 according to factset