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Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

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Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#201

Post by sigstoat »

vkou wrote: post #189
brandmeyer wrote: post #78

Hol' up. While in bankruptcy, some fools ran up the price of Hertz stock. Then, while the price was up in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings , Hertz sold some new shares to the same fools. The final result of the bankruptcy wiped out all of the shareholders. While the buyers were obviously fools, Hertz should have known that zero shareholder value was a likely outcome. How was selling more stock in that situation l…

> How was selling more stock in that situation legal? Why should it not be? Consider the following situation: 1. Alice owns 5 shares of Hertz. 2. Hertz owns 5 shares of Hertz. 3. Bob is an ape. For some stupid reason, Bob wants to buy 5 shares of Hertz. Is it immoral or illegal for Alice to sell her 5 shares to Bob? If not, why should it be immoral or illegal for Hertz to do so? Especially if they are up front about…

and: if it is fine for Alice to sell those shares, what if Hertz is willing to sell them for less than Alice? Should Bob have to pay Alice's higher price for a worthless thing, to avoid some immorality happening?

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#202

Post by lupire »

foerbert wrote: post #102
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks to me like the executives saw an opportunity to part some people from their money and took it. AKA business. > That's wildly different from issuing new shares when you have inside information which prices them at zero. That’s wildly different from Hertz’s bankruptcy being public information. If people want to gamble on unlikely outcomes, that’s their business.

That description also fits straight up robbery. I don't think it's a particularly meaningful statement in this situation.

It's more like an NFT or an ICO.

Why not use Hertz stock as a proof of stake? It's as good as any other made up currency.

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#203

Post by lupire »

TomSwirly wrote: post #160
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks to me like the executives saw an opportunity to part some people from their money and took it. AKA business. > That's wildly different from issuing new shares when you have inside information which prices them at zero. That’s wildly different from Hertz’s bankruptcy being public information. If people want to gamble on unlikely outcomes, that’s their business.

Selling something that you know will end up worthless because you know suckers will buy it is wrong. It's morally and ethically theft. Gross, filthy, self-conscious theft. The fact that people just laugh and say, "That's business!" is an indication of how morally bankrupt the business world is.

Almost everything ever sold ends up worthless. The colloquial term for someone who buys something is "consumer".

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#204

Post by midasuni »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #39
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hit me up when BTC goes bankrupt.

BTC’s version of bankrupt is when transaction fees aren’t worth enough to incentivize mining.

BTC goes bankrupt when one person controls 51% of the mining infrastructure

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#205

Post by bpodgursky »

Judgmentality wrote: post #11
tacheiordache wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GME is not bankrupt yet (it is indeed overpriced and comparable to HRTZ), but TSLA and BTC? They don't belong to the same categories. TSLA and BTC will see a lot of gains to come. Eventually without a definite date what goes up comes down but it'd be silly to not take a piece of the pie yourself and keep your savings in cash...

At the end of the day, people are betting on what they believe (or throwing away their money for the lulz). I genuinely, no bullshit, think TSLA is more irrational than GME, and has been for years. I put my money where my mouth is and I'm up 5x in 2 weeks. I know it won't last, but hey TSLA is crashing too. Nothing lasts forever.

You probably shouldn't check out TSLA today then.

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#207

Post by Lazare »

brandmeyer wrote: post #78

Hol' up. While in bankruptcy, some fools ran up the price of Hertz stock. Then, while the price was up in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings , Hertz sold some new shares to the same fools. The final result of the bankruptcy wiped out all of the shareholders. While the buyers were obviously fools, Hertz should have known that zero shareholder value was a likely outcome. How was selling more stock in that situation l…

1) US securities laws are very focused on disclosure and filling out the correct forms. Hertz did say the stock was (likely) worthless when they filled out the correct form to sell some stock.

2) People were buying (and selling) Hertz stock every day, before, during, and after Hertz's brief offering. If it should be illegal for Hertz to sell the stock, why should it be legal for anyone else to sell the stock? (The obvious reason is "well, what if Hertz had information nobody else did?", but in this case, they didn't. And they were required to disclose that they didn't.) In a pretty real sense, the victims of Hertz selling stock is not the people who bought it (they would have done so regardless), but the other sellers who might have lost out on a sale (or more likely, made the sale, but for a fraction of a penny less than they otherwise would have done) to a sucker who ended up buying from Hertz instead. And it's hard to feel too sorry for people offloading worthless stock to suckers, no?

(Of course, note that nobody who bought the stock from Hertz will have seen those disclosures. It was an at the money offering; the purchasers won't have any idea who they bought their shares from or how old those shares were. But again, US securities law is extremely focused on disclosure to the exclusion of all else...even if the disclosure won't be seen by anyone.)

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#208

Post by CydeWeys »

dragontamer wrote: post #180
thaumasiotes wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is that Hertz specifically wanted to sell an amount of shares that wouldn't raise enough money to pay off their debts. Their prospectus noted that shares sold would automatically become worthless unless their debt was paid off , which they didn't anticipate. But why not try? What if they sold so much stock that the bondholders could just be paid back? Why do the stock sale specifically plannin…

Many would suggest that such an action you propose is fundamentally immoral. Lets say a hypothetical company is overall $-4 Billion in debt (total assets - liabilities). You successfully raise $5 Billion from some means. Now you're in a position where you sold $5 Billion worth of shares on a company that (by all fair evaluations) is only worth $1 Billion after the capital raise.

> Now you're in a position where you sold $5 Billion worth of shares on a company that (by all fair evaluations) is only worth $1 Billion after the capital raise.

That's entirely reasonable if you think that by keeping the company alive you can build it back up until the point that it's worth more than $5B. This is indeed what every CEO thinks -- that they can make the company worth more next year than it's worth this year.

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#209

Post by roywiggins »

TomSwirly wrote: post #160
lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks to me like the executives saw an opportunity to part some people from their money and took it. AKA business. > That's wildly different from issuing new shares when you have inside information which prices them at zero. That’s wildly different from Hertz’s bankruptcy being public information. If people want to gamble on unlikely outcomes, that’s their business.

Selling something that you know will end up worthless because you know suckers will buy it is wrong. It's morally and ethically theft. Gross, filthy, self-conscious theft. The fact that people just laugh and say, "That's business!" is an indication of how morally bankrupt the business world is.

Lots of people sold Hertz stock knowing it was going to be worthless, why should Hertz be singled out?

Re: Hertz, the original meme stock, is turning out to be worthless

#210

Post by avalys »

lupire wrote: post #200
skybrian wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under this argument, why should it be legal for anyone to sell Hertz stock? Should trade be halted? Or if other people can sell the stock, why not Hertz?

Shares were available on the old stock (discounted for pieces of bankruptucy liquidations) Hertz tried to create and sell new shares that would never be worth anything.

This is incorrect. The new shares were of the same class as the existing publicly traded shares.
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