So the stock markets of two of the biggest countries in the world (Russia and China) went to zero quite recently (1917 and 1949). And the author summarizes that stock markets can't go to zero? How does that make sense?
Even his closing statement contradicts itself:
So in conclusion, rest assured
that as long as you are properly
diversified, your stock investments
won’t go to zero.
If you should diversify, then that shows that each piece of your portfolio has a chance to go to zero. So the combined chance of going to zero is not zero either.
This brings up an interesting question: How high is this long-tail risk of a European investor who invests in US stocks? The risk that Europe at some point decides to seize their peoples stocks. Or that the US decides to not respect holdings by Europeans anymore.
What happened to Chinese and Russian people who held US stocks which they bought via the Chinese/Russian stock market? Did those investments got wiped out too? Did their governments seize those? Or did the remeining investors in the US had a gain from the Chinese/Russian investors "disappearing"?
To be specific though, neither of the countries of modern China or Russia existed at those times. In particular, those two dates were revolutionary dates on which entire governments were replaced. There was more going on than just the stock markets.
And as far as I can tell, at least with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, it didn't go to zero in 1950. It was simply closed and liquidated, and that implies that people got back whatever the market value was. That isn't going to zero. I don't know if the money was confiscated by the government or not.
So if one's diversification strategy needs to somehow take into account literal revolution, then I'm not sure how one does that. All bets are off.
In the case of gold or other assets, sure, you can hold it, but the risk (op identifies this) is that you will be killed during the revolutionary war and it won’t matter. Crypto could (and may still be) heavily regulated or even outlawed by states - if they can get you for downloading movies they can get you for your coinbase account. And fine art, too, is subject to sometimes intense state regulation - both in Russia and China international and domestic art trading was severely limited/censored after the revolution.
I've seen diversification strategies that purport to take that into account, generally something like physical gold, investing in yourself and investing in a more stable country while with the investments under the jurisdiction of the more stable country.
And if the exchange was closed and liquidated due to a revolution, who are the investors getting whatever the market value was from?
> who held US stocks which they bought via the Chinese/Russian stock market
it would depend on what it means to hold stock "via the stockmarket".
If those chinese/russian citizens had a legal entity in the US, and purchased via a US broker, then they ought to be able to claim legal ownership of those stocks they purchased.
If, on the other hand, the stock was purchased on custody by a chinese/russian entity, then the govt would've been able to seize that ownership.
> via a US broker, then they ought to be able to claim legal ownership of those stocks they purchased.
This is a funny sentence if you know how US brokers operate, because:
-- The stock is registered at Cede and Co. In your broker's name (not the client's name).
-- Most US brokers don't hold all the stock that their clients "have" in their account. They lend out stock with or without the client's approval.
-- It has happened that a broker doesn't own the stock that any of their clients bought through them at all.
-- Brokers can buy unsettled stock for clients which subsequently "fails to deliver". Meaning: the client gave the broker money to buy a stock, the broker gave nothing in return (but claims that the client has a stock even though it was never delivered).
-- In the US it is entirely possible that a company on the stock market offers x amount of stock and market participants short 2x while 3x amount of call options are in the money to be delivered and brokers are on the hook for that. That means that 5*x of stock can "exist" even though that amount was never issued by the company. Source: this is what happened during January 2021 short squeeze.
So yeah, you have legal ownership. Until you suddenly don't at some point in the future.
> That means that 5*x of stock can "exist" even though that amount was never issued by the company.
that's totally fine if it was lent and re-lent out and short sold etc.
After all, you don't bat an eye that similar thing happens with cash!
The only problem i have with your explanation, which is also the only part i dont think is true, is that the broker's "fail to deliver" portion. The broker _owes_ the buyer a stock, and there's a clearing house that ensures the broker is good for their money. Which is why Robinhood stopped the purchases of GME at that short squeeze, because they can't place enough deposit to ensure that they _could_ make whole their buyers at the clearinghouse.
People say this as if it's evidence of some dark, fraudulent conspiracy.
But it's simply because the exchange allows traders to sell short. If Alice owns 100 troy ounces of gold held in her name at an exchange, and Bob borrows 50 troy ounces and sells them short to Charlie, then Alice owns 100 and Charlie owns 50 when there are really only 100 in the vault.
People own more shares of Tesla than the company has issued, and there are more dollars in bank accounts than the Treasury has issued, and it's all normal and natural and the way the system is supposed work.
I get that about dollars and stocks, but people who hold gold out of fear that the music is going to stop don't realize the same musical chairs problem applies to precious metals unless you physically have custody of them.
I meant the latter. Stocks purchased on custody by a chines/russian entity.
Because that is how the world works today. People from all around the world buy shares of companies all around the world. But the companies don't know those people. If Europe decides to seize all stocks of their citizens, it could do so by just seizing the brokers.
"If you should diversify, then that shows that each piece of your portfolio has a chance to go to zero. So the combined chance of going to zero is not zero either."
Sounds like Boltzmann distribution in action but in economics form. ;)
The post specified that the stock market going to zero implies some sort of catastrophic event leading to the dissolution of the US government and economic system - which is exactly what happened in Russia and China. As much as people whine about the red scare, a communist revolution in the US is very unlikely.
With regards to the last point, a close parallel would be to ask at what happened to people exposed to Russian stocks prior to February 2022. While not going down to zero, suddenly being cut out of the global market has a similar effect.
>> According to statista.com, somewhere between 19,000 to 60,000 businesses file for bankruptcy every year in the United States, although not all of these are publicly traded companies.
Understatement of the year? About 20-200 public companies go bankrupt in a year [1]. So about 0.01% of the numbers quoted.
- AND there are no market makers / liquidity pools,
- AND none of the holders of a stock have external pressures to sell (futures/options),
- AND the business itself hasn't filed for bankruptcy
Then no: The last traded price will be non-zero, and all sellers will have withdrawn from that market, as without external pressures, sellers will just wait out until buyers return to the market. In the interim, the price would remain fixed to the last traded price until trades resume.
It is fundamentally irrational to sell a stock at 0 under these narrow circumstances, when compared to the infinitely better option of just waiting until market trades resume.
Otherwise, yes.
- MMs/LPs create 'synthetic buyers' by facilitating order fulfillments, taking on some risk in hopes of making a return via the spreads in between buy & sell orders. Their participation, even in extreme circumstances, mean that price discovery continues even when everyone wants to withdraw from the market.
- Futures & options create obligations for buys/sells in the future due to the nature of said instruments.
- The bankruptcy portion is self-explanatory: A stock is worthless is there's no business to back the claim up.
The last price may be non zero but the papers or electronic records your purchased may be worth zero because there will be no future buyer. That's what happened with the described revolutions.
I am the backstop. If the stock market goes to $1 I will personally buy all public companies in the US using the change I found underneath my couch. I am willing to make this personal sacrifice to maintain the financial stability of the free world.
It's not a burden I take lightly, but it's one I take of my own volition.
When a company goes bust it isn't worth 0. Its actually worth way less year 0. (In other words it owes creditors money.)
Yes, it'll own some assets, customer lists, trade marks, copyrights, maybe even property, vehicles, desks, a coffee machine, whatever [1].
The liquidator will come in, assess quickly how much everything is worth, then plan how to spend as much time as possible disposing those things so their bill more-or-less matches the money raised. (Cynicism maybe... but as a stiffed creditor it sure seems that way.)
So you can't "buy" the company for $1. The company has lots of (hopefully) valuable assets. But it also has lots of creditors.
[1] one of my distributors declared bankruptcy, leaving us an unpaid (thankfully software) bill. The liquidator sold all the assets and surprisingly the most gained was on their customer list. That alone would have made all the creditors whole. Instead the liquidator bill swallowed 95% of all the monies raised.
There's a lesson in there somewhere for creditors and owners to work together to extract maximum value -before- formal bankruptcy starts. Probably easiest to do if the big creditor is not a bank.
The company may be worth less than 0, but the stock can't be (thanks to limited liability).
I've seen scenarios where creditors and owners work together. In practice what this means is that one or two big creditors - usually friends with the owner, or unofficial partnership - get their money back, dozens of small suppliers and other unsecured creditors get shafted.
Yes, it's pedantic, but I think you're right. A price of $0 should mean that people are buying and selling for $0, which isn't as stupid as it sounds because prices (of some things at least) can be negative, so why shouldn't they sometimes be exactly zero?
If there is no prospect of people buying and selling the thing any more, or the thing doesn't even exist any more, then the price went to $NaN, obviously!
I offer to charge for advice, regardless of its utility. Alternatively, I offer to corrupt the regulatory oversight such that the entire thing becomes a pay-to-play arrangement whereby I am guaranteed a return but no liability for my selfless work.
Of course stock markets can go to zero but they probably will not. It is impossible to prepare for myriad near-zero-probability Armageddon events so don't waste time thinking about them. Strengthen the cognitive noise gate, focus on things within your locus of control.
It is like theoretically you could just fall through the floor by just atomically shifting through it. It is possible but very unlikely before the heat death of the universe.
Stock markets are more likely than that but it is also something I wouldn't lose any sleep over.
“It would, in fact, take a catastrophic event involving the total dissolution of the US government and economic system for this to occur.”
As Hamlet would say, aye, there’s the rub. Economic collapse is actually far more frequent than is commonly believed, here survivorship bias of the US economy plays a staring role.
In the past century Chinese and Russian investments went to zero, not just stock but land, businesses, private property, it all went to zero. This is the largest country by land area and the largest by population. Given the average lifespan of empires is around 250 years, and the USA is going to be that soon in 2026, it may be even more likely.
Mathematically, do you believe perpetual growth in stock values and in concomitant asset inequality is feasible or even possible? Dubito ergo sum.
The crazy thing is, if everyone suddenly vanished the stock market would continue while the power grid is still up and the automated high frequency trading continues. There is no value because there are no people to infer value but the structure of it would persist for a little while.
A stock is a contract. Can you have a contract when money isn’t exchanged? Or, can you a price change (from $0.01 to $0.00) when presumably there’s no more liquidity? I’m going with no, a stock cannot go to zero.
The currency stocks are traded in could probably get devalued by hyperinflation so that it’s effectively zero. But not nominally. But that would only affect one market (well, ir depends on how one defines market).
In a hyperinflation world it's the opposite. Stocks go up in value (in proportion to the inflation) since they become a better vehicle of wealth than cash.
Indeed this is true for normal inflation too. Stocks, commodities, and so on are hood hedges against inflation primarily because the thing they are based on is "not cash".
In an inflation world it is -only- cash which deflates. Everything else (that is real), more or less, has steady value.
Hasn't exactly been true the last couple of years, granted that's a bit of a short term view as far as stocks go. Major market indices pretty much flat, inflation 11% over 24 months.
Everything goes to zero eventually. But it’s more likely though that the stock market will be replaced by something else, rather than all companies simultaneously going bankrupt. (Which doesn’t have to be communism as practiced in the 20th century)
Time goes on forever, and present day capitalism is not the most effective economic system possible nor is it indefinitely sustainable, so in that sense it’s eventually guaranteed to go to zero.
> Can both the government and the economic system fail in the United States to such an extent that all existing companies on the stock exchange become valueless with no prospects of any future business? Perhaps.
Stock market != economy. If the stock market crashed overnight, the economy would take a hit, but the expectation would be for it to be functional.
Only because the stock market doesn't include private businesses, sole proprietorships, etc. If, hypothetically, all economic activity was securitized, and the price of those securities collectively went to zero, then yeah, that's what an observation would look like of a non-functional economy.
Electricity prices can go negative, interest rates can go negative, so yeah, there are conceivable circumstances where the "stock market" can go not just to zero but negative. I.e., people paying something to get rid of their stock ownership.
Argumemts about rationality and arbitrage are good for quantitative finance books and the make-believe worlds they construct. They dont define the limits of what can actually happen in human economies.
I don’t know if these are good examples. Money and electricity both have inherent liabilities that don’t seem to translate to stock. At the end of the day, cash has to be transported and stored somewhere. Negative interest rates can be used to effectively pay somebody else to store your cash. A similar situation has happened with oil prices going negative.
Negative electric rates could be used to increase load on a grid that would otherwise be generating too much electricity.
Is there any kind of liability that comes with owning stock in a company? I don’t see any motivation to ever pay for somebody to take ownership of your stock.
In 2022, Meta was added to the list of terrorist and extremist organisations in Russia, and some people suggested that owners of Meta stock should be considered sponsors of terrorism. Do a few more steps and stock may become a liability.
The concept of limited liability limits this negative scenario. And my limit buy for the entire US stock market @5cents keeps it from going to exact zero
There are exceptions to limited liability. Courts can pierce the corporate veil and hold directors or shareholders responsible when a case gets controversial enough.
I’m not aware of a recent example of public company shareholders being held liable, but it’s only one Supreme Court decision away.
> there are conceivable circumstances where the "stock market" can go not just to zero but negative
No there are not. As a shareholder you cannot be held accountable for losses of the company you're holding the shares of. In the worst case, your share becomes worthless.
What if your stock was worthless or close to worthless and your broker/custodian was charging you a hefty fee to hold it for you? Then it could be rational for you to pay someone to take it off your hands.
While stocks have limited liability, there can still be costs associated with holding them which could theoretically drive their prices negative.
if you own a stock that society comes to see as despicable you might get into a situation where you want to get rid of it at any price, including paying
clearly the company behind that stock is not viable if that sentiment persist but the negative market price is theoretically possible
ex-post an extraordinary event a lot of people are wise and can "rationalise" how it did happen.
the question is whether one can rationalize what can happen before it does.
that requires understanding in depth what the system is and how it might behave in extremes
open any quantitative finance book older than a few years and it will tell you that interest rates cannot go negative because... blah blah... some cash arbitrage
it turns out that arbitrage is not implementable...
Even his closing statement contradicts itself:
If you should diversify, then that shows that each piece of your portfolio has a chance to go to zero. So the combined chance of going to zero is not zero either.This brings up an interesting question: How high is this long-tail risk of a European investor who invests in US stocks? The risk that Europe at some point decides to seize their peoples stocks. Or that the US decides to not respect holdings by Europeans anymore.
What happened to Chinese and Russian people who held US stocks which they bought via the Chinese/Russian stock market? Did those investments got wiped out too? Did their governments seize those? Or did the remeining investors in the US had a gain from the Chinese/Russian investors "disappearing"?