Can the fund/person/company demand that the fossil fuel company gives them their money back? Basically, how can divestment ultimately work if we’re trying to get *everyone* to divest…?
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So this isn’t a question about fossil fuels, this is purely a question about trading stocks.
All stock trades need a buy and a seller and they agree on a price to exchange shares at. When you see a stock price of a company, all that is is the last price an exchange between a buyer and seller was made at.
If you want to sell shares, a buyer wants to buy it as low as possible. So lets say you try to sell it at $100, no takers, lower it to $99, and maybe someone is buying there. And so on. If no one is buying, in theory the stock can go to zero, although there are lots of cavets here that are way beyond the scope of the question.
If there are no buyers for stock, for whatever reason, the stock could go to zero, although the company still has assets (like money, factories, trucks, etc), so until it doesn’t have anything of value, the stock is still technically something not zero. When a company has a zero price stock or very low price, some much more complicated stuff starts happening, such as the company going out of business but selling off their assets (like say buildings, trucks, etc.) and giving their shareholders whatever they can from those sales. At that point as well, the stock may no longer be traded on the public markets anyways, which is called “delisting”, and happens when a company is going out of business, you can’t trade its stock anymore.
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