[awinder]

I’m an investor on the other side who is just minding my own business buying market indices and then all of the sudden, less-than-ethical actors show up and bid up the price. Now I am being effectively taxed by buying portions of a soon-to-be-worthless company. Who/what are we going to optimize this situation for?

In this case the NYSE jumped on delisting hertz stock to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. But courts and government have to step in constantly, and a tooooon of law created, because we live in an incredibly complex system and it’s almost never clear cut how to optimize for greatest freedom/happiness.

[idoby]

Less-than-ethical according to who?

If you're buying indices then you have explicitly given up control of a portion of your portfolio to them, and they can lose money as well as gain. Sounds to me like you're just complaining because you lost money because of this move, but symmetrically speaking, you could have gained.

And to be clear, I'm not long or short Hertz and have never been (unless some index or fund I'm holding happened to buy their stock).

[awinder]

Hertz lawyer, for one. And I will lose some nominal amount, or maybe I made money, depends on when the index rebalances. But NYSE racing to delist in the face of this move and Hertz own lawyers comments are enough that no, in objective reality, there’s many reasons why this isn’t just some simple issue.

[idoby]

I'm very curious to know this objective reality and how to discover it.

[RhysU]

One is free to buy the index and to short the individual names that one does not want.

(One's compliance department permitting.)

[ric2b]

Shorting isn't free.