Some months ago when the price of oil bottomed out I bought into Occidental Petroleum, which invests in offshore operations.
Occidental is lagging as the international demand recovery hasn't been quick, so I'm still underwater on those shares.
When I checked my brokerage accounts this morning (first time in awhile, actually) I noticed two entries for Occidental Petroleum shares. I had a bunch of shares, with minimal value, that were listed as warrants.
Never heard of that before, so I did some digging and found out that Occidental issued the warrants, which work very much like purchase options, to shareholders as of a certain date (
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/26/2054312/0/en/Occidental-Announces-Distribution-of-Warrants-to-Purchase-Common-Stock.html)
The warrants are good for 7 years, and give me the option of purchasing an equal number of shares at $22 a share, no matter what the face price is at that time.
I figure I'm going to sit on those for awhile until the price starts to rise and then I'll buy them out.
Interesting, though, that I had never heard of warrants.