[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Originally Posted by 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.

Damn, I'm sorry that happened. I've learned so much over the last couple years about the system and it's definitely not a level playing field. It's a rigged system and the big boys do what they want.

Does the new company not have to give you some ownership though ??

I got caught in that with MMTLP, I knew it was going to be delisted but they cut off trading 48 hours early and the I now have new ownership of a company not publicly traded and have to look at a $3800 stock in my portfolio that is worthless.