What gizmodo overlooks is that a Moody's rating is usually related to company debt, which means that a ratings downgrade increases the interest rate they have t

What gizmodo overlooks is that a Moody's rating is usually related to company debt, which means that a ratings downgrade increases the interest rate they have to pay to roll over existing debt or issue new debt. Seems like a company with a large debt/income ratio could be crippled pretty fast by a ratings downgrade because it increases the percentage of revenue they pay in debt interest. If they have a high debt load and their profit margins are single digit, they risk ceasing to be profitable, which will tank the stock. It's a spiral. If they have catastrophic cybersecurity exposure that opens them up to fines, settlements, and customer attrition as a result of an incident like the one that affected Equifax, well that's a target for a fire sale. It's practically inviting hackers to target companies with high debt/income ratios on behalf of short sellers for that reason. It would be a slow motion car crash that would be hard to time correctly, but the confluence of debt/leverage and security risk seems like a perfect storm.