If you were stuck paying a 3-year 15% interest loan just to keep an empire of wounded businesses afloat, and then somebody offered to take all that debt off your hands at a premium, any one of us would probably take that offer. That is probably what Tilman Fertitta will do, too. And you can’t blame him.

Rumors are swirling since last week from Bloomberg that Fertitta may soon bring his Golden Nugget casino and restaurant empire public for a valuation of “several billion dollars” as quoted from “one of the people”. Bloomberg was pretty frank about the situation, in financial-speak of course, but the message is obvious enough. “Listing a stake in the business,” says Bloomberg, “could allow the billionaire to take advantage of strong investor appetite for new equity offerings to pay down debt.”

Translation: Money is being thrown at stocks like lap dancers in the VIP section, so just go ahead and make it rain shares.

Will the IPO, assuming it happens, be worth buying? That depends on your intentions. If we just look statistically, there have been 196 IPOs year to date in the United States. 47 have been losers, or about 24%. The rest are all winners, so far. So just there, your chances of making money from a short term trade perspective, provided you get out in time, are pretty good. The average return across all IPOs, winners and losers this year, has been 61%. I’m sure Fertitta is well aware of all this and would very much like to take advantage of the historic amount of liquidity flooding Wall Street, because it can’t last forever.