Peter,
Do you feel any compunction about "playing their game"? I think it is obvious that many of these companies are deliberately misleading people in order to make money. And you know it. By getting in early enough on the pump you can get out with a profit, but someone without your experience - who doesn't really know what's going on - is buying your shares. I know it isn't you who's doing the pumping, but why participate at all? I realize that in the Clinton era it's all about get-whatever-you-can-and-let-the-lawyers-defend-me-later, but is it worth it? Does it feel good when you spend that money?
I will not cast these aspersions on you alone however. I'll bet that few people reading this haven't gambled on a penny stock that they felt was a sham, but wanted to bag some quick scratch. In my first year of investing I naively purchased two OTC stocks - lost almost everything on one and hit a 4-bagger on the other. It was dumb luck. Both were exposed as complete shams. The magnitude of the second one made me decide never to own any stock that I believed was being pumped in this way, and to sell immediately - at any price - if I unwittingly stepped into one of these P'sOS. I didn't want to associate myself in any way with these operations, and I don't want to profit at the expense of inexperienced people who are being mislead. As you know, with a little more experience it is fairly easy to spot them and avoid them.
I suppose that I may still be naive, and that this is simply the way of the world. I hope not, and I hope for all our sakes that there is a substantive difference between speculating on legitimate stocks and their relative value based on economic conditions, and gambling that you won't be the last to sell a fraudulent time-bomb. |
