Everything You Need To Know About Penny Stocks
The penny stocks are normally found on the pink sheets or the OTCBB. If you want to buy over-the-counter securities like penny stocks you need to go to the OTCBB which is an electronic quotation system that is designed just for that purpose. These companies must file finical reports to the SEC if they wish to remain listed here. If this requirement is not met then the company can only be quoted via the Pink Sheets. The Pink Sheets activities are not monitored or regulated by the SEC.
No filings need to be done for a company whose total assets are less than $10 million or if they have less than 500 shareholders.
Penny stocks are very open to manipulation and scams. As many of these companies are small their share prices are normally well under $5 and their capitalization is very low. Because of the lack of mandatory reporting that goes with penny stocks, it can be very hard for potential investors to get a hold of information about the company they want to buy shares in.
This can be used to a scammers advantage, they can publish misleading information and use it to manipulate their own stock prices. There is never very much trading happening with penny stocks because of the low number of shareholders and the low level of public interest. This has the effect that just a few people buying or selling there shares will have a big change in the stock price.
Penny or micro-cap stocks have a low liquidity which is to their advantage. Listed stocks are more stable and as such they can almost never take massive jumps in value, whereas penny stocks do that regularly. Because of the low share prices you can buy a lot of shares in a company for a very small amount of money. This makes it easy to see that even a small change in share price can cause a difference to the way your stocks will perform.
Whilst the low share prices and the chance at making big money are a lure for young novice investors the penny stock market is definitely a place of experienced traders to play. There is always some amount of risk involved when investing in penny stocks. Some of these companies will not be able to make a turnaround and will end up going bust. This will make your shares worthless.
Because penny stock companies may have little or no working capital or assets or they may even still be in the development stages and it may be a while before the company sees any revenue. It is vital that you remember that you might have to wait for weeks to sell your stock without the need to discount it because of the low liquidity.
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