If a company I bought stock in was de-listed but is now listed again under a new symbol, what happened to my shares?
If the company went bankrupt, the issued public shares that were outstanding at the time most likely were voided, in which case your shares are most definitely gone.  The company might have done a new stock issuance coming out of bankruptcy with a different symbol, and while it could be substantially the same company, it doesn't mean much for you.  It's unfortunate this may be the case, but it is one of the risks of investing.
"There is one other factor that I haven't seen mentioned here.  It's easy to assume that if you buy a stock, then someone else (another stock owner) must have sold it to you.  This is not true however, because there are people called ""market makers"" whose basic job is to always be available to buy shares from those who wish to sell, and sell shares to those who wish to buy.  They could be selling you shares they just bought from someone else, but they also could simply be issuing shares from the company itself, that have never been bought before. This is a super oversimplified explanation, but hopefully it illustrates my point." "The ""par value"" is a technicality that you can ignore in this case, and it has nothing directly to do with the merger.  When a company issues stock, it puts a ""par value"" on the shares.  If it later issues more shares, they cannot be issued at less than par value. The rest of the notice seems to be as you said: If you hold until the merger takes effect, they are going to give you $25/share and your shares will be gone.  As always, you can try to sell on the open market before that time instead, although you can bet that not too many people are going to want to give you more than $25/share at this point." If the company reported a loss at the previous quarter when the stock what at say $20/share, and now just before the company's next quarterly report, the stock trades around $10/share. There is a misunderstanding here, the company doesn't sell stock, they sell products (or services). Stock/share traded at equity market. Here is the illustration/chronology to give you better insight:   Now addressing the question What if the stock's price change? Let say, Its drop from $10 to $1 Is it affect XYZ revenue ? No why? because XYZ selling ads not their stocks the formula for revenue revenue = products (in this case: ads) * quantity the equation doesn't involve capital (stock's purchasing) Simple Schwaab does not have actually your securities they have leased them out and have to borrow them back. all assets are linked with derivatives now. They show on the balance sheet but have to be untangled. Thats why the market drops disproportionally fast to the actual number of shares sold. does it still count as a capital gain or loss? Yes. Is it essentially treated like you sold the stock at the price of the buy-out?  Yes. Do you still get a 1099-B from your broker? Yes. "In Second Opinion's opinion, they say ""Do not initiate new position.""  This means do not buy the stock if you do not already own it.   Since they also say to hold if you do own it, this is a very ""who knows what it will do"" neutral position (IMO)." "During GM's Chapter 11 reorganization in 2009, a new company was formed, with new stock.  The old General Motors Corporation was renamed to ""Motors Liquidation Company,"" and the new company was named ""General Motors Company.""  The new company purchased some of the assets from the old company, and the old company was left to sell off the remaining assets and settle the debts. None of the stock transferred from the old company to the new one; if you were a GM stockholder of the old company and didn't sell, it is now worthless. When the new company formed, the stock was not traded publicly.  The company was primarily owned by the United States and Canadian governments; together, they owned 72.5%.  In 2010, GM had an IPO, and the US government sold most of their stake.  By the end of 2013, the US government sold the remaining stake; the government no longer has any ownership in GM. When we talk about voting rights for stockholders, we are mainly talking about voting for the members of the board of directors.  And yes, the government did indeed have a hand in selecting the board of the new company.  The Treasury Department selected 10 members of the board, and the Canadian government selected 1 member.  There were 19 board members total. (Source) Unlike some companies, there are not ""voting"" and ""non-voting"" classes of GM stock.  All the shares sold by the US government are voting shares. Additional Sources:" Or you owned one that was bought out, so you got a ~30% return + whatever else the stock had returned prior to that. Everyone is pushing for the companies they hold to be bought for a quick paycheck, so you're seeing fewer companies... Just because it gets delisted from one of the big boards doesn't mean it can't trade over the counter.  For example GM went OTC under the ticker MTLQQ for a while.  That being said, just because the stock is trading over the counter doesn't mean it has any real long term value. How can they reduce the number of shares I hold? They may have purchased them.  You don't say what stock it is, so we can only speculate.  Let's say that the stock is called PENNY.  So they may have taken your 1600 PENNY shares and renamed them to 1600 PENNYOLD shares.  Then they created a new $5 PENNY share and gave you .2357 shares of that in exchange for your 1600 PENNYOLD shares.  This suggests that your old shares were worth $1.1785 or less than a tenth of a cent each.   As an example, MYLAN did this in 2015 as part of their tax inversion (moved official headquarters from the US to Europe).  They did not change the number of shares at that time, but MYLAN is not a penny stock.   This is the kind of thing that might happen in a bankruptcy.   A reverse split (where they give you one share in exchange for more than one share) is also possible, although you received an odd amount for a reverse split.  Usually those produce rounder numbers.  A number like .2357 sounds more like a market price, as those can be bizarre. During a stock split the only thing that changes is the number of shares outstanding.  Typically a stock splits to lower its price per share.  Sometimes if a company's value is falling it will do a reverse split where X shares will be exchanged for Y shares.  This is typically done to avoid being de-listed from an exchange if the price per share falls below a certain threshold, usually $1.  Again the only thing changing is the number of shares outstanding.  A 20 for 1 reverse split means for every 20 shares outstanding the shareholder will be granted one new share. Example X Co. has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $100 per share.  It does a 1 for 10 split.  Now there are 10,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10 per share. Example Y Co has 1,000,000 shares outstanding for a price of $1 per share.  It does a 10 for 1 reverse split.  Now there are 100,000 shares outstanding for a price of $10. Quickly looking at the news for ASTI it looks like it underwent a 20 for 1 reverse split.  You should probably look at your statements and ask your broker how the arithmetic worked in your case. Investopedia links for Reverse Stock Split and Stock Split Originally, stocks were ownership in a company just like any other business- you expected to make a profit from your investment, which is what we call dividends to stock holders. Since these dividends had real value, the stock price was based on what this return rate was, factoring in what it might be expected to be in the future, etc.  Nowdays many companies never issue any dividends, so you have to consider the full value of the company and what benefit could be gained by another company if it were to acquire it. the market will likely adjust the share price to factor in what the value of the company might be to an acquirer.  But otherwise, some companies today trading at an astronimical price, and which nevers pays a dividend- chalk it up to market stupidity. In this investor'd mind, there is no logical reason for these prices, except based on the idea that someone else might pay you more for it later... for what reason? I can't figure it out. Take it back to it's roots and imagine pitching a new business idea to you uncle to invest in- it will make almost nothing compared to it's share price, and even what it does make it won't pay anything to him for his investment. Why wouldn't he just laugh at you? Does this make sense? I'm concerned that by buying shares with post tax income, I'll have ended up being taxed twice or have increased my taxable income. ... The company will then re-reimburse me for the difference in stock price between the vesting and the purchase share price. Sure.  Assuming you received a 100-share RSU for shares worth $10, and your marginal tax rate is 30% (all made up numbers), either: or So you're in the same spot either way.  You paid $300 to get $1,000 worth of stock. Taxes are the same as well.  The full value of the RSU will count as income either way, and you'll either pay tax on the gains of the 100 shares in your RSU our you'll pay tax on gains on the 70 shares in your RSU and the 30 shares you bought.  Since they're reimbursing you for any difference the cost basis will be the same (although you might get taxed on the reimbursement, but that should be a relatively small amount). This first year I wanted to keep all of the shares, due to tax reasons and because believe the share price will go up. I don't see how this would make a difference from a tax standpoint. You're going to pay tax on the RSU either way - either in shares or in cash.  how does the value of the shares going up make a difference in tax? Additionally I'm concerned that by doing this I'm going to be hit by my bank for GBP->USD exchange fees, foreign money transfer charges, broker purchase fees etc.  That might be true - if that's the case then you need to decide whether to keep fighting or decide if it's worth the transaction costs. It depends on what site you're looking on and what exchange they're pulling the data from. Even though funds and stocks are called the same thing, they have different ticker symbols in each country's exchange or could be traded as pink sheet stocks in the US. If a company or fund is based in another country (like Canada or the UK) they probably also trade on that country's exchange (Toronto or London) under a different symbol. This can cause a lot of confusion when researching these tickers. There are a lot of forces at play here, one of which is addressed in your second bullet point. Housing, transportation, food, and healthcare are pretty much the staple expenses of a modern day human.  While these expenses all have a range from minimum required to function and luxurious all humans incur these costs.  The lower rung wage earners earn an amount closer to their actual costs than higher earners.  As income scales up these expenses typically also scale up with different lifestyle choices.   There reaches a breaking point though where is so much excess to your income that you begin meaningfully spending on investments; you may also begin to take a meaningful portion of your compensation in securities rather than currency.  In times where the economy is booming, folks who hold assets in securities rather than currency really win.  In 2008 people in that highest rung really took a wealth hit (and probably an income hit).