I think the spirit of the question is whether the stock is listed on a stock exchange, not whether it's possible to trade essentially worthless shares with others off-exchange.

sold Ṁ22 of YES

@AaronLehmann I agree. Also I guess technically SIVB is no longer traded and now is under the ticker SIVBQ...

sold Ṁ397 of NO

@AaronLehmann based on what? And why should that matter if that's not what the question is actually asking?

predicted YES

@jack is it not the same company though?

predicted NO

I work in finance. If you cant trade it on a public stock exchange, its not considered public. Thats what private means

predicted NO

@jack you can trade anything over the counter. By that logic every private company is public. You can trade Stripe stock OTC but its not public. Public refers to trading something with someone you don't know with a fairly agreed upon market price.

predicted YES

@MarcusAbramovitch Oh yeah, you're right that you can also trade private companies OTC. But a public company being unlisted doesn't make it stop being public.

predicted YES

Well, hmm, I guess maybe there are two different usages of the term: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/how-stock-markets-work/public-companies

There are two commonly understood ways in which a company is considered public: first, the company’s securities trade on public markets; and second, the company discloses certain business and financial information regularly to the public.

sold Ṁ30 of YES

Ok, so I think "publicly traded" (the term used in the question) seems to definitely mean on traded on an exchange, whereas "public company" could refer to either trading on an exchange or meeting the regulatory requirements of a public company e.g. filing financial statements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_company)

Therefore I think the question should resolve NO.

predicted YES

@jack Why do you say "publicly traded" means "traded on an exchange"? In any case, I don't think it matters. "Resolves true if I can (in theory) buy a share of SIVB on Monday 3rd April." He could have bought SIVBQ in the OTC market, which is a different ticker symbol but a share of the same company as SIVB.

@AndrewHebb That's simply the definition of publicly traded based on most places I look at.

I agree that there's some argument to be made for yes, and also some argument to be made for no, which I think is probably stronger. In any case, I've sold all my shares.