a financial backer guide to avoiding stock fraud
Like any other business opportunity, penny stock investment requires finding out as much as you can about the product being offered and weighing its advantages and disadvantages. If you receive a phone call or email that urges you to buy a hot stock pick of the day, you have a choice: Either be careful, even skeptical, or accept the offer blithely.
One common investment proposal that you will find littering your inbox is penny stock offers. They are very persuasive and if you don’t think with your mind, you will easily fall to their trap of absurd return claims and ultra convincing testimonials. It gets worse if you don’t have basic financial literacy or if you do not know anything about the stock market. You will easily fall into the trap and lose your money.
In the words of Warren Buffet: Don’t invest in anything you don’t know about. If you don’t know anything about penny stocks, then don’t start. Learn about it first and seek guidance from the experts before diving into anything so risky like penny stocks. To know if the messages about penny stocks are scams, here are some tell tale signs it is a scam.
One sign to be wary of are astronomical returns, or if they guarantee success in the stocks. Stocks are risky investments. There are no guaranteed returns to it. Astronomical returns are possible but rare. You need to have been able to time the market well and your stock pick was right on target. But usually, returns from the stock market don’t reach the sky. They are higher than most investment vehicles but not absurd returns. Bottom line is foolproof returns are impossible. Only savings can boast of safety.
Second, scams usually say the deals are for a limited time only and the investment price is very cheap. This makes you think the coast is clear and you will be getting a bargain. But once again, not doing due diligence on any investment is the biggest risk you can take. You can lose all your money in that single lapse of judgment.
More often than not, these shady stock sellers will regale you and attempt to strike awe with glittering success stories of big companies that they’ll claim started with their very own stock picks. If you happen to come across such claims of how some of today’s Fortune 500 companies started out with penny stock shares don’t fall for it. This approach has often been used, and is in fact overused.
The important thing to do is to not be gullible. Always be skeptical and do due diligence by checking their SEC records. Make sure they are duly licensed and their information can be checked for legitimacy. They have to have a good reputation and a long track history before you can even think of investing your hard earned money with them.
Never be pressured to make an investment decision. Always give time to study the offer before making a sound decision. Success is not instant, especially with stock investments. You have to learn about stocks, and about trading. Long term is often the best strategy in stock investment. Just look at Warren Buffet.
The critic who wrote this column has detected a capital structure expert named Josh Yudell. I believe Josh Yudell to be widely considered an expert in the fields of investor relations, SEC compliance, corporate finance and capital structure.
