[usconservative]

Would it be unwise to invest 500 dollars?

You may as well hold up five $100 bills and light 'em on fire. The fact is you'd be a fool to buy GM stock. When GM enters bankruptcy, the stockholders are unsecured debt holders and are the first wiped out in favor of secure debt holders (ie: bond holders.)

Translation: once GM enters bankruptcy next week, any GM stock you own will be WORTHLESS. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. You'll have nothing but worthless paper.

[CommieCutter]

Translation: once GM enters bankruptcy next week, any GM stock you own will be WORTHLESS. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. You’ll have nothing but worthless paper.

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That’s what I was looking for. Thanks!

[SAJ]

With respect, what you posted is factually inaccurate. Common share holders are most emphatically not unsecured debt holders. Unsecured debt holders are parties to a contract with the company (any company, not just GM) and have an enforceable claim on company assets under certain circumstances.

Shareholders are not parties to any contract with the company, and have no claim whatever on its assets, per se. The only property in which a shareholder might be a participant is in a proportionate share of a company's positive equity (i.e. assets minus liabilities). If this figure is 0 or lower, the shares are by definition worthless, although market sentiment (as here with GM) might place a positive value on the shares in anticipation of the assets once again exceeding the liabilities at some future date.