The Iron Lotus

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Paddy Hirsch

Published October 8, 2018 at 4:06 PM EDT

Today on The Indicator, we answer your questions. Well, one of them anyway. Listener Sam Spear wrote to us to ask us about the mysterious financial contortions performed by a company called Helios and Matheson, which owns a company called Moviepass. Specifically, Helios and Matheson performed a reverse stock split, after which they diluted their stock an extraordinary amount. Sam asked us to explain what happened, and why, and whether what Helios and Matheson was even legal.

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Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

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Paddy Hirsch