[Rain Man]

I'm officially annoyed. Some company came in and stole a good stock from me.

ATCO (don't bother looking it up because it's gone now) is a shipping company. It was a great stock. I was getting decent returns and a good dividend that added up to notable low-key success. It was one of my largest holdings and was definitely a keeper.

I was doing a checkup and realized that it was no longer in my portfolio. Some stupid company bought them out and the board of directors voted for it, and apparently that gave the new company the right to go into my personal account and sell the shares.

I understand the mechanics - as a shareholder I could have voted against the purchase with my 0.0000001 percent holdings of the company. The big fish voted for it and therefore my stock is gone. But man, something seems really wrong about a company that I've never heard of being able to order my personal account to sell the stock without my permission or knowledge. If you look at it logically, they said, "we think this stock is worth more than the market, so let's take it from all of the small shareholders so we can make the money on it instead of them".

It reeks of the big guys ripping off the retail investors.