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by mschuster91
900 days ago
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No. That would destroy the stock markets in an instant. The way it has always been is that with a classic stock, the only risk an investor has is the money they paid someone to acquire the stock. There exist other classes with actual post-buy liabilities, e.g. stock options, as one particularly unlucky poor sod discovered at the start of the 2020 plaguefest [1], but normally these are (supposed to be) heavily gated for actually qualified investors for precisely that reason. Personally, I'd keep it that way... and nationalize companies that can't pay their fees, without paying out the shareholders. That way, the shareholders get punished, the jobs created by the company aren't lost, and the government gains something of value. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-y... |
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You're talking about situations where people are borrowing shares and selling them, with the hope of buying the share back later to pay back the borrowed share. Obviously that's a bad scene if you borrow / sell the share and then it goes from $20 to $20,000,000,000.... Your liability in these scenarios is infinite, but it is also part of the trading system to manage those exploding liabilities.
If you buy a property, and it turns out that property is a former toxic waste dump, you own that liability from that asset. What you thought would make a wonderful daycare is now going to cost you millions to remediate.
If you buy into a partnership, and one of the other partners does a silly thing and now the partnership owes someone millions, you're on the hook for that.
If you buy a stock, your liability is the money you've invested in the stock, which is why stocks are such a wonderful innovation (as seen from a 1400's perspective where debts are paid back by all owners).