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However, as long as someone isn’t betting their life savings on this I don’t see or take any issue with it. ... Thai Gaon, a 23-year-old salesman in San Franc

However, as long as someone isn’t betting their life savings on this I don’t see or take any issue with it. ... Thai Gaon, a 23-year-old salesman in San Francisco, bought 35,000 Hertz shares on June 4 at $1.43, spending a little over $50,000, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It was my entire life savings,” he said. “I decided, you know, if I’m gonna do it, I should do it big, and I’ll make a play and see what comes out of it.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-12/if-you-want-hertz-have-some-hertz%0A https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-12/if-you...

alexandercrohde 6y ago
shrug And people jump off bridges. Doesn't mean we stop building bridges. The market is rough, them's the rules, sorry not sorry.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  I mean, we make the rules with government. We can change the rules whenever we want. Maybe a rule should exist for such edge cases to protect unsophisticated investors in a country not known for financial literacy?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Yeah, I tend to agree. This kind of deal with extreme and ridiculous risk is exactly what accredited investor rules are supposed to mitigate - but because Hertz is a public company they don't apply.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      I’d agree accredited investor rules should apply for any public company fundraising while in bankruptcy.
  - gruez 6y ago
    You mean something like "accredited investor"?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > shrug And people jump off bridges. Doesn't mean we stop building bridges. The market is rough, them's the rules, sorry not sorry. But it also doesn't mean we can't put barriers on those bridges that prevent people from jumping off. A rule preventing a company from selling stock when it's pursuing a bankruptcy would be just such a barrier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Risk is an integral part of the market. Why should people be prohibited from taking risks? I could probably get behind preventing people from taking extreme risks--those that would likely make them dependent on our social safety nets--but why prohibit people from putting a few bucks into a high risk investment (which is what you're doing if you prohibit the sale of stock in companies pursuing bankruptcy)? Even if you're 23 and betting your life savings, you still have an income and retirement account and a lot of working years left before retirement.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > Risk is an integral part of the market. Why should people be prohibited from taking risks? Because some people are incompetent at judging risks, and offerings like these seem primarily designed to take advantage of those people.
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        You're just rephrasing the original argument, not rebutting my proposal. So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)?
        ardy42 6y ago
        > So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)? 1. These risks aren't reasonable. 2. It's practically simpler to ban this kind of weird and sketchy offering entirely than to implement some kind of control to limit the impact of what people can lose on a particular investment.
paulpauper 6y ago
yeah but a 23 year old has a lot of life ahead of him. much different than a 70 year old doing that.
- JackFr 6y ago
  A 23 year old with 50K in savings is doing fine. That’s not even 1 years tuition at a top business school. And he’ll learn A ton when he loses it all.
Chilinot 6y ago
I hope he sold at june 8. He would have made some serious bank. But even if he sells today he will turn a profit
CapriciousCptl 6y ago
That’s an impressive savings for a 23yo. Imagine all the work and discipline going into it. I wonder how much work and discipline he put into betting on Hertz.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  And Hertz of all companies. My experiences with them have been uniformly awful; they always try to charge me for insurance or services which I explicitly decline, and their customer support is openly hostile. I'm sure they were a competent company at one point in time, but betting your life savings on a company that is apparently surviving on fraud is bold.
  - StrangeDoctor 6y ago
    But all of that shitty behavior is actually good for the shareholders (in the short term) they were essentially seeing how much you could abuse captive and or ignorant customers.
- collyw 6y ago
  Parts may have been gifted to him. If self earned yes impressive.
- pastage 6y ago
  Pretty normal if you manage to save a lot and start working during highschool.
narrator 6y ago
Sounds like he's been reading /r/wallstreetbets.
opportune 6y ago
I don’t know why so many commenters here seem to want to prevent people like this from speculating/investing how they want. His risk tolerance is larger than yours and he’s arguably making a very stupid investment, so what?
- pbreit 6y ago
  Because the vast majority do not understand what they are getting into.
- simias 6y ago
  It's like having to wear a helmet when you ride a bike, you might say why does the government cares, it's my life after all. But the problem with this logic is that if you fuck up hard enough you effectively become a liability for society. You'll hit the safety net and tax dollar will be spent helping you recover. And that's a good thing in my opinion, but because of this we can't just watch people going "YOLO" and putting themselves in extremely precarious situations and say nothing. If the guy ends up on food stamps, society will pay for those. It's therefore in society's best interest to prevent this insane risk taking.
  - opportune 6y ago
    You don’t end up on food stamps by blowing your savings
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      You do if, say, you get laid off the following week due to a deadly pandemic.
  - pastage 6y ago
    Who decides what is risky enough to warrant that? Your example with bicycle helmets is a perfect example, helmet usage is not correlated with less bicycle accidents/injuries. The greater risk is that people choose a car just because they do not have a bicycle helmet, considering long term health should be a part of it.

alexandercrohde 6y ago

shrug And people jump off bridges. Doesn't mean we stop building bridges. The market is rough, them's the rules, sorry not sorry.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
I mean, we make the rules with government. We can change the rules whenever we want. Maybe a rule should exist for such edge cases to protect unsophisticated investors in a country not known for financial literacy?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Yeah, I tend to agree. This kind of deal with extreme and ridiculous risk is exactly what accredited investor rules are supposed to mitigate - but because Hertz is a public company they don't apply.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    I’d agree accredited investor rules should apply for any public company fundraising while in bankruptcy.
- gruez 6y ago
  You mean something like "accredited investor"?
ardy42 6y ago
> shrug And people jump off bridges. Doesn't mean we stop building bridges. The market is rough, them's the rules, sorry not sorry. But it also doesn't mean we can't put barriers on those bridges that prevent people from jumping off. A rule preventing a company from selling stock when it's pursuing a bankruptcy would be just such a barrier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_barrier
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Risk is an integral part of the market. Why should people be prohibited from taking risks? I could probably get behind preventing people from taking extreme risks--those that would likely make them dependent on our social safety nets--but why prohibit people from putting a few bucks into a high risk investment (which is what you're doing if you prohibit the sale of stock in companies pursuing bankruptcy)? Even if you're 23 and betting your life savings, you still have an income and retirement account and a lot of working years left before retirement.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Risk is an integral part of the market. Why should people be prohibited from taking risks? Because some people are incompetent at judging risks, and offerings like these seem primarily designed to take advantage of those people.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      You're just rephrasing the original argument, not rebutting my proposal. So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)?
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > So I ask again: why prohibit everyone from taking reasonable risks when it's perfectly feasible to prohibit only high risk investments (i.e., those risks that would be financially ruinous i.e. put the investor on social support)? 1. These risks aren't reasonable. 2. It's practically simpler to ban this kind of weird and sketchy offering entirely than to implement some kind of control to limit the impact of what people can lose on a particular investment.

paulpauper 6y ago

yeah but a 23 year old has a lot of life ahead of him. much different than a 70 year old doing that.

JackFr 6y ago
A 23 year old with 50K in savings is doing fine. That’s not even 1 years tuition at a top business school. And he’ll learn A ton when he loses it all.

Chilinot 6y ago

I hope he sold at june 8. He would have made some serious bank. But even if he sells today he will turn a profit

CapriciousCptl 6y ago

That’s an impressive savings for a 23yo. Imagine all the work and discipline going into it. I wonder how much work and discipline he put into betting on Hertz.

throwaway894345 6y ago
And Hertz of all companies. My experiences with them have been uniformly awful; they always try to charge me for insurance or services which I explicitly decline, and their customer support is openly hostile. I'm sure they were a competent company at one point in time, but betting your life savings on a company that is apparently surviving on fraud is bold.
- StrangeDoctor 6y ago
  But all of that shitty behavior is actually good for the shareholders (in the short term) they were essentially seeing how much you could abuse captive and or ignorant customers.
collyw 6y ago
Parts may have been gifted to him. If self earned yes impressive.
pastage 6y ago
Pretty normal if you manage to save a lot and start working during highschool.

narrator 6y ago

Sounds like he's been reading /r/wallstreetbets.

opportune 6y ago

I don’t know why so many commenters here seem to want to prevent people like this from speculating/investing how they want. His risk tolerance is larger than yours and he’s arguably making a very stupid investment, so what?

pbreit 6y ago
Because the vast majority do not understand what they are getting into.
simias 6y ago
It's like having to wear a helmet when you ride a bike, you might say why does the government cares, it's my life after all. But the problem with this logic is that if you fuck up hard enough you effectively become a liability for society. You'll hit the safety net and tax dollar will be spent helping you recover. And that's a good thing in my opinion, but because of this we can't just watch people going "YOLO" and putting themselves in extremely precarious situations and say nothing. If the guy ends up on food stamps, society will pay for those. It's therefore in society's best interest to prevent this insane risk taking.
- opportune 6y ago
  You don’t end up on food stamps by blowing your savings
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    You do if, say, you get laid off the following week due to a deadly pandemic.
- pastage 6y ago
  Who decides what is risky enough to warrant that? Your example with bicycle helmets is a perfect example, helmet usage is not correlated with less bicycle accidents/injuries. The greater risk is that people choose a car just because they do not have a bicycle helmet, considering long term health should be a part of it.