Adelphia Stock: An Up-down-up-down Story

Sometimes stocks aren't the bargain they appear; and other times, they're a great deal even when they look not so great. Adelphia stock has been a great example of both. Adelphia, like many cable and communications companies, diversified in the 1990s to keep up with the rest of the deregulated communications industry. It started offering cable, digital cable, telephone service, and high-speed dialup, and was investing in all the right technologies. It looked good. Really good. But then in 2002 scandal broke. Adelphia stock plunged when its primary shareholders and corporate executives were hauled off to jail on charges of defrauding the company to the tune of billions of dollars. Adelphia stock had been over-inflated anyway by an incestuous purchasing scheme cooked up by these malefactors, and all of a sudden this promising bright star was shown to be a hollow fraud. What's the investor to do? Some people sold off fast, at a whopping loss. Others, having already seen their Adelphia stock plummet, paused, then sold off later to even greater losses. But there were those brave few who stuck with their stock, or even purchased more. Why? Because what goes down may sometimes go up. Investing is taking a risk. Every good investor knows this. And Adelphia, despite the terrible blow that had been dealt to it, was still a good solid company that just had a whole heap of debt and no current president. But some of the assets were restored, and business continued despite the company's headless status. And eventually, the red numbers started to shrink. Today, it looks like those investors who stuck tight may have not lost their shirts at all. Parcels of Adelphia are being sold off to help finance the rest of the company, and new leaders have emerged to run the company. Adelphia stock has not yet regained its earlier value, but it is selling higher than it was during the panicked-sell off period. And there may be a deal with megalith Time-Warner to sell the rest of the company and finally close the debt-ridden chapters of its book. Overall, if you own Adelphia stock, hold on to it. It's probably not going to drop further, and has a chance of being bought out soon by a good company.

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