Mike

Yeah.

Nine X. And the explanation, I mean, if you can call it an explanation was that this kind of GameStop era of retail enthusiasm combined with a new generation of investors who had learned that apparent

certainty in markets is usually uncertain, kicked off.

And Robinhood was flooded with new Hertz buyers.

So the zero commission broker that had empowered a new wave of meme stock investors, suddenly a lot of buys.

And the thesis was that sometimes bankrupt companies recover, right?

That was the overarching...

But what happened after that, whatever the absolute cause, you're right, I think what you've just described is more likely than a bunch of people going, maybe it's not bankrupt.

It was even less thoughtful than that.

But what happened next crossed from absurd into pure unprecedented because Hertz management

watched its meme inflated stock price um with genuine bewilderment you know like these were grown-ups women and men who'd seen and been through the trenches of corporate war and knew that once you say you're bankrupt it's game over um and so they approached the sec security exchange commission with a proposal to raise 500 million dollars in fresh equity by selling new shares

to retail investors.

And the SEC raised objections about disclosures, I presume, specifically whether investors understood that they were buying stock in a bankrupt company that might and probably is worth nothing

But this jolt of adrenaline in the arm of all the management team clearly cut through.

They were quite giddy, I presume, because a year later, the scenario was supposed to be, or the scenario that should have been impossible happened and Hertz managed

to reach a deal with a private equity investor or investors to exit bankruptcy with a restructuring that actually returned value to shareholders, $8 per share.

And investors who bought at $6.25 during the peak of the frenzy still came out ahead.

And the people who had been mocked for buying a bankrupt stock had, against all reasonable probability, been vindicated, which is a dangerous thing because if somebody...

does something that's highly improbable and everyone who's grown up in the room says that is not going to end well but it does end well it reinforces the chancellor's self-belief do you know what i mean

Yeah.