How a SPAC actually works.
A SPAC is a company with no business and a deadline, and almost everything that happens to your money is decided by a date. Start at the top and stop wherever you like.
The SPAC lifecycle, date by date
What a SPAC does between raising money and either buying something or handing it back — and the ten dates in that sequence a shareholder can be caught by.
Read What you are buyingShares, Units, Warrants, Rights
A SPAC IPO sells you one security that becomes three, priced independently and behaving nothing alike. Which leg carries the floor, which one is the lottery ticket, and how to tell them apart from the ticker.
Read Where it is nowThe three stages a SPAC can be in
Which stage the one you hold is at decides what you actually own and what is worth reading. Three stages, a fourth that gets mistaken for one of them, and two states that hide inside "searching".
Read ReferenceWalk a SPAC's timeline
Every stage one at a time: what happens, which filing says so, what it means if you hold the shares, and the trap at each step.
ReadEducational only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything, and every timing described is a market convention that a particular SPAC's charter is free to contradict — see the disclaimer. Questions rather than explanations: the FAQ.
Then look at where each one stands.
Every listed SPAC with what it raised, when the clock started, and where it trades against its $10 issue price.