Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input.

Stocks and Bankruptcy
When they entered Bankruptcy they changed their stock symbol from AAMR to AAMRQ. The Q tells investors that the company i in Bankruptcy. This i what the SEC says about the Q: "Q" Added To Stock Ticker Symbol When a company is involved in bankruptcy proceedings, the letter "Q"   is added to the end of the company's stock ticker symbol. In most   cases, when a company emerges from bankruptcy, the reorganization plan   will cancel the existing equity stock and the old shares will be   worthless. Given that risk, before purchasing stock in a bankrupt   company, investors should read the company's proposed plan of   reorganization. For more information about the impact of bankruptcy   proceedings on securities, please read our online publication,   Corporate Bankruptcy. The risks are they never recover, or that the old shares have nothing to do with new company. Many investors don't understand this. Recently some uninformed investors(?) tried to get a jump on the Twitter IPO by purchasing share of what they thought was Twitter but was instead the bankrupt company Tweeter Home Entertainment. Shares of Tweeter Home Entertainment, a Boston-based consumer   electronics chain that filed for bankruptcy in 2007, soared Friday in   a case of mistaken identity on Wall Street. Apparently, some investors confused Tweeter, which trades under the   symbol TWTRQ, with Twitter and piled into the penny stock. Tweeter, which trades over the counter, opened at 2 cents a share and   jumped as much as 15 cents — or 1,800 percent — before regulators   halted trading. Almost 15 million shares had changed hands at that point, while the   average daily volume is closer to 150,000. Sometimes it does happen that the new company does give some value to the old investors, but more often then not the old investors are completely wiped out.