> Do they? Nobody buying this stock thinks Hertz is going to recover.

You should have a chat with them. People absolutely believe this. Same goes for airlines and cruise lines. I'm a former hedge fund trader, so I've had many of my friends come to me lately, and seek advice. I often ask how they're making money now and they say (for instance) things like "I walk/drive by Starbucks and I see people still buying coffee, so I bought SBUX". They're not doing any sort of real analysis, but their pseudo-analytic abilities are reinforced by the Fed. They don't really think that they were right because everything went up, they think it boils down to common-sense theses like the above.