$HTZ

On 22 May 2020 Hertz filed for bankruptcy. Four days later the stock hit forty cents. Two weeks after that it was over six dollars.

Retail had bought a company that already told a judge it was worthless. Hertz noticed, and filed to sell 500 million dollars of fresh stock into the crowd, writing in the paperwork that those shares could end up worth nothing at all. The SEC stepped in and the offering was pulled.

Everyone agreed it was the dumbest trade in market history.

On 30 June 2021 Hertz walked out of Chapter 11. Creditors were paid in full. The shareholders, the ones who held a bankrupt company the whole way down, took over a billion dollars of value.

Holding till zero worked.

So $HTZ is priced in HTZ. The joke and the collateral are the same asset.

On 24 June 2026 Hertz fell 41 per cent in a single day.

It had just cut its quarterly profit forecast and blamed the used car market. Then it raised money in a way that is hard to describe politely: 350 million dollars of PIK notes, and 37 million new shares at 2.70 dollars, where the buyers of the notes were expected to short those same shares to hedge. Hertz sold stock to people whose plan was to bet against it.

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, once one of the largest holders in the company, sold the lot. Their investment chief said they had lost confidence in management over a funding plan they did not think was necessary.

On 5 August the S&P dropped it from the SmallCap 600, for no longer being representative of the small-cap market.

Shareholder equity is negative. The stock touched 8.18 dollars inside the last year and is down more than seventy per cent in 2026.

Nobody had to write this part. The ticker did it on its own.