Centaur1989

Let's think in first principles here, shall we? Stocks (or equity) is a fractional stake in current and future earnings of the company. We know if a company declares bankruptcy, its liabilities have exceeded assets and equity is down to zero or negative. Debt holders have higher priority stake in the company, so the first thing that happens in ~100% bankruptcy filings is debt holders take ownership of all assets. Current equity is almost always wiped out. After restructuring, debt holders may issue new equity, which may be worth something - but is completely different from what is currently circulating right now. No matter how you look at it, Hertz stock currently is worth zero. When street price of an asset is higher than its intrinsic value - that's literally the definition of a bubble. One can easily make money trading a bubble asset, but should not conflate returns here with asset's ability to generate future income.

No. That's not how price collusion works. If Delta airlines started charging for 2nd baggage, and after their announcement United/American/Southwest follow suit, that's not a price collusion if it wasn't predetermined secretly through implicit and explicit signaling among the airlines. The other airlines had option of either increasing their margins by adding new fee, or keeping 2nd bag free and hoping to make more money with increased volume (profit = unit margin volume). They are free to choose former or latter in our capitalistic setup. If there aren't any easily available substitutes, and you don't expect some new entrant to come and distrupt you, first option becomes much more lucrative. Especially if you have negative unit margins, since with second option - negative marginshigher volumes = lots of losses

People here seem to think that Uber/Lyft do not have any competitive moat. I disagree. What we seem to forget is that just because a VC can burn boatloads of money to capture ridesharing market from Uber/Lyft doesn't mean that they would. From a game theoretic POV, Uber and Lyft have signaled that they're ready to fight for survival in markets they are established in. Unless as a startup founder you can demonstrate that you can achieve lower cost structures than Uber/Lyft, no VC will fund their rapid growth (small offerings will still find a niche, assuming they don't get gobbled up). Uber/Lyft do have a VCs-will-not-race-to-the-bottom-with-them moat, and tomorrow they might as well raise their prices to turn profitable. Their biggest challenge is Waymo and SDC because if a competitor as significantly lower cost structure, all bets are off.