AMR prices $400 million equity offering

[410OhOne]

What are you talking about? All but one of the top ten holders is a mutual fund company or an asset management firm investing for individuals. The stock is held primarily by growth funds.

Your absolutely right. 100% Now I challenge you to define individual. Better yet, go take a $1000.00 bill and go try to invest with any of the top ten AMR holders and let us know your successes.

 

[FWAAA]

Your absolutely right. 100% Now I challenge you to define individual. Better yet, go take a $1000.00 bill and go try to invest with any of the top ten AMR holders and let us know your successes.

Plenty of mutual funds still have $500 minimums for IRAs and most allow minimum investments of $2,500 or less. My kids even have positions in several Fidelity and Vanguard funds.

My IRAs and 401k are invested in a variety of mutual funds.

What's magical about $1,000? I'll grant you that not every mutual fund allows minimum investments of only $1,000, but some do.

Please name one insurance company on the entire planet that is invested in AMR. Hint: It would likely be determined to be a speculative investment, and thus, insurance companies wouldn't/couldn't hold it.

Mr Owens prattles on and on about "institutional ownership," but the reality is that most individual holders of stock don't even hold it in their own name anymore - they hold it in street name. My AMR is held by a unit of Vanguard - the discount brokerage division. That means that my name doesn't appear on any AMR records as a shareholder; Vanguard's name does.

 

[Oneflyer]

Your absolutely right. 100% Now I challenge you to define individual. Better yet, go take a $1000.00 bill and go try to invest with any of the top ten AMR holders and let us know your successes.

Fidelity Investments IRA

Looks like you can open an account with as little as $200.

Fidelity Investment and Vanguard are the two biggest mutual fund companies in the world and they are for the individual investor in every sense. The vast majority of customers have acounts under $100k.

 

[Bob Owens]

Mr Owens prattles on and on about "institutional ownership," but the reality is that most individual holders of stock don't even hold it in their own name anymore - they hold it in street name. My AMR is held by a unit of Vanguard - the discount brokerage division. That means that my name doesn't appear on any AMR records as a shareholder; Vanguard's name does.

Then Vanguard votes for you, and you have no say in how they vote.

Most of the "Institutional ownership" is through "Funds" run by those Institutions. When you put your money into those funds you only have a say as far as leaving it with them or taking it out.

The shares that are held in these Funds by these Institutions are controlled by these Institutions, not the individuals who invested money into the Fund. When it comes time to vote the Institution does the voting, since the stock is in their name. The investors in these funds put their money into the fund, not any individual stock so they do not really become "owners" of any company at all. Not even the company that controls the fund!

In other words they own nothing , only the right to share in any increased value or loss of the fund run by the Institution. Its more like betting than owning, if you bet on the Mets and they win, you win, if they lose you lose but you still have no say in who or how the team is managed.

The idea that we are becoming an "ownership society" is false, in fact the few at the top are gaining more control than ever. With the growth of "funds" driven by the forced participation of the general public, I say forced because of the demise of pensions, Social Security and our lack of "stock market savy", more and more capital will be controled by unelected, unaccountable people. Sure we can move our money from fund to fund but no matter what fund we put our money into we still do not end up with collective control over any company, in fact we are becoming less relevant than ever before.