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Someone watched wolf of Wall Street recently!

You don't.

You may wish to check out Stock Gumshoe at:

Stock Gumshoe | Secret Teaser Stocks Revealed. Investment Newsletters Reviewed.

They have a great amount of free info and a paid subscription (but not required to get value from their site!).

Basically they evaluate the 'hypey' headlines that most investment promotion services publish and give you what their research uncovers. Additionally, they allow comments from readers/subscribers who may already be paid subscribers to the service they are reporting on and much of what someone pays for can often be found in these comments.

They also have a 5 star rating system for the various newsletter services out there so you can see what actual paid subscribers rate them for several different categories, i.e., customer service, value of recommendations etc..

Just for fun, I Googled the stock Sykes got busted for: iTrackr Systems, Inc.: Private Company Information - Businessweek

I'd pay attention to Bloomberg and Forbes, etc., and find a good forum devoted to stock trading.

It can be done, but the odds are not favorable. Research the broker as well as the companies.

Penny stocks are one of the worst gambles you can make. The "pump and dumps" have made it nearly impossible to know if there is a legitimate possibility for growth or if it is pure hype. Most, if not all, of the so-called proof that "I went from $1,000 to $1,000,000 in two years" are just reverse engineered picks. It is very easy to research past listings; pick winners by buying and selling at the right time; and then claim you made all those in real time. The slickest ones will show a few fake losers also to make it more believable.

Just wait for major economical news like the EU bank adding stimulus to the economy or general elections, you need a lot to invest to make good returns but you just know the market will react a certain way to certain events.

I will throw out some more names/resources.

Since I don't have any stock investments, I can't give them my highest endorsements,
but they seem legit and at least educational. Read up, google names for scams, talk to
your professional advisors, and then you can separate the wheat from the chaff when
dealing with a stock broker, promoter, or using something like etrade.

Maybe get a free consult with a Certified Financial Planner and find out more about what
kind of investor you would be - high risk or not, etc.

Anyway:
Nick Hodge "Early Advantage" - primarily in the energy sector
currently suggesting high gains through uranium stocks
Energy Investing For Dummies: Nick Hodge, Jeff Siegel, Christian DeHaemer, Keith Kohl: 9781118116418: Amazon.com: Books

Energy and Capital

MotleyFool at http://fool.com

Daily Reckoning - Economic News, Markets Commentary, Gold, Oil and Investing Strategies.

You absolutely can not make money trading penny stocks over the long term.

These sites operate in a very similar approach to sports betting sites: the site sends out 10 different penny stock ideas- they group there list into 10% segments so if one of these crappy ideas go up they have a group to aggressively sell. They do this over and over and eventually there is a very small sub-group that has seen a good trade. Often times they buy in front and sell once its 'pumped' but this approach is illegal so the legal exposure is huge. On the other hand, the first example is not illegal just extremely misleading and obviously unethical.

Jonathan

Well, of course, the best way to get rich on penny stocks is to own the company.

Basically it's partly good ole gambling luck and partly your understanding of business. A lot of new companies show quite a bit of capital gain - but if you look into the prospectus, it's from funding, not service/product sales. What part of their intake are they spending on output? Etc. You want something with a healthy product sale.

What % was funded (doesn't disqualify a product because the fact it found funding says at least a little bit if it was funding from non-owners) Ask yourself, what % of a population will want, need, use the product - what's the cost of each product (divide by current sales to see how much is actually selling). Is it a one time or long term use product, disposable, one time sale only -- just do some math and then hope that everyone who is part of the market for a product really wants it. Do some projection accounting.

If you aren't familiar with futures markets or growth industry projections - study up, that helps, too. Sometimes blind luck isn't bad for gambling either.

I've sometimes wondered if there was some contrarian trading approach to the pump-and-dump scams. i.e., The scammers send out millions of emails trying to get people to buy a given stock, so would there be any merit toward the idea of using options or shorting, etc., knowing full well what's going to happen after they dupe some people?

As a former financial planner who specialized in stock and mutual fund investing, I am not a big fan of penny stocks. There's a reason why they have such low valuations.

Now that doesn't mean people don't make money investing in penny stocks, but like anything else out there, you have to really know what you are doing. Penny stocks are not for the faint of heart, nor is it a place for the novice investor. I invest in them rarely and only when my due diligence points out that it's set to move.

My not-so-secret weapon with my stock investments for the past decade plus has been Investors Business Daily. I love that publication. I used to be very active on the IBD forum, but found myself spending way too much time in there are not enough on my own investments. You can learn more about William J O'neils style of investing at Investors.com

The IBD University is free and have found it very useful to learn their CANSLIM method of stock investing. I've taken different methodologies and have combined them to come up with my own. I may hold a stock for a few hours or a few days, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. I do have some long term in individual stocks apart from my mutual fund investments.

I've made my trades with Ameritrade, TradeStation, eTrade (back in the day), and Charles Schwabb and have been happy with all of them. You can often find deals where you can get a few hundred commission free trades.

RoD