Exactly, Sicilia. Value is a personal decision. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about gold. Yet, we are pricing it at $1,000 per once. Why? Because there are those who will pay that much to possess it. There are not many who want to possess Bear-Stearns stock. Thus, $2 per share.

Those who follow stocks do pay attention to underlying value such as value of the assets that a company owns. As Sicilia points out, many of BS assets have lost so much value that, upon liquidation, they would not retire BS debt.