[lawkwok]

I started following the crazy penny stock craze in 2020 and this story is a common sight.

Some reddit, Stocktwits, or other stock analysis site have people monitoring obscure tickers looking for anomalous volume spikes. You’re lucky if the company has more than a low quality logo as the entire website. Sometimes there’s minimal contact info, which people use to connect the company to potential real people on LinkedIn. Maybe you’ll even find the company registered in Delaware and keep digging through financial documents.

The companies are almost always random, profitless entities owned by one person acting as a a custodian for the billions of shares in the float. They promise to clean up the finances and submit paperwork so the ticker can move up through the various OTC exchange hoping to appear more credible.

The stock analysis websites are really sad because you’ll see people hoping to get rich believe anything they read. Some “shill” will say they heard from a little birdie that the company is going to merge with another stock soon, or financial documents are about to be released, or the CEO is planning to retire millions of shares (out of several billion, mind you). Of course, nothing happens and people are left bag holding for years until the next pump, or until the stock effectively goes to zero.

[cyral]

Bonus point if their “source” is some blogspam website that looks credible to your average penny stock inventor but will actually post whatever content you want if you send them $50.

[sydthrowaway]

What if you timed it perfectly and sold at the top?