If I invest in a company that goes bankrupt, is that a gain or a loss?
I'll give the credit to @Quid in the comments section of the question.  You put out $10k, you got back $20k, that's a cash gain of $10k, how the asset was valued between your purchase and sale isn't relevant. From an accounting perspective, the company is the only party that is realizing the loss (as they have sold the asset for 40K less than par). You the buyer, only get to see the initial buy and sale of such capital asset.  Example: A company purchases a car for $20,000 and after depreciation it is worth (book valued at) $2,000. It is then sold to a customer for $3,000.  Does the customer realize a loss of $1,000? No.  Does the company realize a gain of $1,000? Yes.  Your bank analogy is flawed in two ways:
"Because I feel the answers given do not wholely represent the answer you are expecting, I'd like to re-iterate but include more information. When you own stock in a company, you OWN some of that company. When that company makes profit, you usually receive a dividend of those profits. If you owned 1% of the company stock, you (should) recieve 1% of the profits. If your company is doing well, someone might ask to buy your stock. The price of that stock is (supposed) to be worth a value representative of the expected yield or how much of a dividend you'd be getting.  The ""worth"" of that, is what you're betting on when you buy the stock, if you buy $100 worth of coca cola stock and they paid $10 as dividend, you'd be pretty happy with a 10% growth in your wealth. Especially if the banks are only playing 3%. So maybe some other guy sees your 10% increase and thinks, heck.. 10% is better than 3%, if I buy your stocks, even as much as 6% more than they are worth ($106) I'm still going to be better off by that extra 1% than I would be if I left it in the bank.. so he offers you $106.. and you think.. awesome.. I can sell my $100 of cola shares now, make a $6 profit and buy $100 worth of some other share I think will pay a good dividend. Then cola publicises their profits, and they only made 2% profit, that guy that bought your shares for $106, only got a dividend of $2 (since their 'worth' is still $100, and effectively he lost $4 as a result. He bet on a better than 10% profit, and lost out when it didn't hit that. Now, (IMHO) while the stock market was supposed to be about buying shares, and getting dividends, people (brokers) discovered that you could make far more money buying and selling shares for 'perceived value' rather than waiting for dividends to show actual value, especially if you were not the one doing the buying and selling (and risk), but instead making a 0.4% cut off the difference between each purchase (broker fees). So, TL;DR,  Many people have lost money in the market to those who made money from them. But only the traders and gamblers." "By definition, a downturn in the business cycle will push some companies into bankruptcy. What's worse, a downturn in the business cycle will trigger ""bankruptcy fears"" for a LOT of companies, far more than will suffer this fate. So the prices of MANY candidates go down to levels that reflect this fear. This aggregate impact produces the ""overreaction"" you're talking about. It's called ""fallacy of composition""; some of these companies will go under, but not all. Then the prices of the survivors will bounce back strongly during the early stages of an upturn when it becomes clear which companies WON'T go bankrupt." "Of course, but that's not relevant to my example. Let me clarify: say you hold a highly-appreciated $10M position in AAPL and you have good reason to believe the next iPhone is going to be a flop, causing the stock to decline 20%. You can sell now to avoid the (probable) decline, but by doing so you will be left with, let's say, $6.67M after paying $3.33M of state and federal LTCG taxes on the appreciation ($9M of the $10M, because you bought a long time ago).  However, by simply doing nothing and ""eating"" the 20% decline, you'll end up with $8M instead of $6.67M.  Many economists would criticize the tax in this example, as it has led to the investor rationally suffering a $2M loss, instead of reallocating all $10M of his/her capital to a more promising enterprise. Furthermore, if/when many investors act that way, they can create inefficiency in the equity markets (prices not declining by as much as they should to reflect a firm's reduced prospects)." The book value is Total Assets minus Total Liabilities and so if you increase the Total Assets without changing the Total Liabilities the difference gets bigger and thus higher. Consider if a company had total assets of $4 and total liabilities of $3 so the book value is $1. Now, if the company adds $2 to the assets, then the difference would be 4+2-3=6-3=3 and last time I checked 3 is greater than 1. On definitions, here are a couple of links to clarify that side of things. From Investopedia: Equity = Assets - Liabilities From Ready Ratios: Shareholders Equity = Total Assets – Total Liabilities OR Shareholders Equity = Share Capital + Retained Earnings – Treasury   Shares Depending on what the reinvestment bought, there could be several possible outcomes. If the company bought assets that appreciated in value then that would increase the equity. If the company used that money to increase sales by expanding the marketing department then the future calculations could be a bit trickier and depend on what assumptions one wants to make really. If you need an example of the latter, imagine playing a game where I get to make up the rules and change them at will. Do you think you'd win at some point? It would depend on how I want the game to go and thus isn't something that you could definitively say one way or the other. "I don't think ""cost of carry"" is the right word here.  Yes, you have the opportunity cost (what you could have earned during that time if you had invested the money somehwere else) and then you also have interest rate risk and default risk." "If a company is doing well, it seems less likely to go bankrupt.  If a company is doing poorly, it seems more likely to go bankrupt.  The problem is, where is the inflection point between ""well"" and ""poorly""?  When does a company start to head into oblivion?  Sometimes it is hard to know.  But if you don't call that right and hold onto your shares when a company is tanking, others, who call it before you do, will sell off, devalue the share price, and now you've missed your chance to get out at a good profit.  If you hang on too long, the company may just go bankrupt and you've lost your investment entirely. A healthy profitability of the company therefore has to bolster investor confidence in avoiding this very unpleasant scenario.  Therefore, the more profitable a company is, the more shareholder confidence it inspires, and the more willing to pay for it in the form of increased share price.  And, this then has a ""meta"" effect, in that each shareholder thinks, ""all other investors think this way, too,"" and so each feels good about holding the stock, since he knows he can likely easily liquidate it for good cash if he needs to, either now or in the next year or sometime hence." "Yes and no.  There are different classes of shares - Some have voting rights, some *don't*.  Some take precedence over others in a bankruptcy.  Some get larger dividends.  ""Common"" isn't really a useful description of your stake in the company.  You *do* have a ""stake"" in the company, but not all shares are equal." Generally speaking, if a business loses money for whatever reason, then that reduces the profits of the business which reduces the tax payable. However if you were holding the assets on a personal basis prior to incorporating the business, the position may become more complicated. For that kind of money some professional advice may be worthwhile. In this type of strategy profit is made when the shares go down as your main position is the short trade of the common stock. The convertible instruments will tend to move in about the same direction as the underlying (what it can be converted to) but less violently as they are traded less (lower volatility and lower volume in the market on both sides), however, they are not being used to make a profit so much as to hedge against the stock going up. Since both the bonds and the preference shares are higher on the list to be repaid if the company declares bankruptcy and the bonds pay out a fixed amount of interest as well, both also help protect against problems that may occur with a long position in the common stock.  Essentially the plan with this strategy is to earn fixed income on the bonds whilst the stock price drops and then to sell both the bonds and buy the stock back on the market to cover the short position. If the prediction that the stock will fall is wrong then you are still earning fixed income on the debt and are able to convert it into stock at the higher price to cover the short sale eliminating, or reducing, the loss made on the short sale. Effectively the profit here is made on the spread between the price of the bond, accounting for the conversion price, and the price of the stock and that fixed income is less volatile (except usually in the junk market) than stock. Research the company. Obtain and read their current and past financial statements. Find and read news stories about them. Look for patterns and draw conclusions. Or diversify to the point where one company failing doesn't hurt you significantly. Or both. I'm afraid you're not going to get any good news here. The US government infused billions of dollars in capital as part of the bankruptcy deal. The old shares have all been cancelled and the only value they might have to you are as losses to offset other gains. I would definitely contact a tax professional to look at your current and previous returns to create a plan that best takes advantage of an awful situation. It breaks my heart to even think about it. The economic effect of a CFD from your point of view is very close to the effect of owning the stock. If the stock goes up, you make money. If it goes down you lose money. If it pays a dividend, you get that dividend. You'll typically pay commission for buying and selling the CFDs in a similar way to the commission on stock purchases, though one of the advertised advantages of CFDs is that the commission will be lower. They also often have tax advantages, for example in the UK you don't have to pay stamp duty on CFDs. In theory you are exposed to credit risk on the CFD issuer, which you aren't with the real stocks: if the issuer goes bankrupt, you may lose any money you have invested regardless of how well the stock has performed. It's certainly similar to a bet, but not much more so than investing directly in the stock. In practice the issuer of the CFDs is likely to hedge its own exposure by actually buying the underlying stocks directly, but they can aggregate across lots of contracts and they would tolerate some unhedged exposure to the stock, so they can cut down on the transaction fees. You also won't get the same voting rights as the underlying stock would grant you. It would be the sales revenue less everything else. When he says reinvest, that is to say they keep all of the post-tax earnings and place it in retained earnings. This means that it is still the companies money to invest and use to fulfill their goals. If they didn't have any worthy investing opportunities, they could issue dividends. So say your cost of capital is, eeeeeh, 15%. And the best investment you can make will earn you 12%. That's a loss of value. So the company, acting in the investors best interests, will give those funds back so that the investors can allocate that money to more efficient areas. Dividends are one mechanism a company has to control their rate of growth. If this was a public corporation (stock) and the investment was made in a non-registered account, then you can claim a capital loss.  Capital losses are claimed against capital gains (not income), and can be carried back 3 years or carried forward indefinitely.   Here's an article I've written on how to claim capital losses that may help. Doesnt mean that equity or even debt holders wouldn't lose their investment.  Those money and banking texts are presently useless post GFC given the incredible moral hazard and how all of the traditional bankruptcy rules were ignored.