I mean, look at SVB, only as the most recent example. They went from an extremely valuable company to being worth zero over a weekend, despite having billions o

I mean, look at SVB, only as the most recent example. They went from an extremely valuable company to being worth zero over a weekend, despite having billions of dollars in assets (even minus liabilities). Their shareholders also went to zero with them. You can argue that SVB is weird because they're a bank and their assets had to be liquidated to service banking customers; but that's basically how all companies work. Assets get liquidated to service debtors, generally at a significant discount on the value they reported the asset to be worth to the government. Usually; "believe has evaporated" happens to companies that, right before the belief evaporated, had to take on significant debt to survive another quarter, so that liabilities number is high. Lawyers and gutters get paid. Maybe insiders get priority liquidation. You can reasonably philosophically view corporate shares are partial ownership in the assets of a company. Realistically; if there's been one instance in history of a share converting into liquid capital after a "belief has evaporated" event, that resulted in more than, like, I can buy a coffee with this money, I'd love to hear about it.