Let’s start with the concept of someone giving you free advice on which stock to buy and when to buy it. What’s in it for them? That’s the first question that comes to mind when I think of these websites. If they send you free e-mails and don’t ask you for any money on return, then how do they make their money? To get one thing straight… getting a tip on a stock is not the way to play the stock market. You need to do your own research on the stock that you are looking to purchase. Don’t be what I refer to as being a penny stock chaser.

These websites are more designed to get others to buy into stocks that they’ve already set up a position in and are waiting for the “new” investors to jump on the band-wagon and cause the price to go up. When that happens, they will scale out of their position and leave those who are not as quick to get out before the price drops back to where it was.

In my research of these websites, I signed up for their e-mails and track how the stock moved. In many of these cases ( over 85%), I would never own or invest into any of these stocks. Their balance sheet and the financial reports of these companies did not look good. As a matter of fact, one company in particular WDAS.PK, was being hyped by three different websites. What did the stock do from the e-mails? What happened was unbelievable. The first alert was on Sunday Oct. 11th. Telling their subscribers to buy at $0.05, but when the stock opened on Monday it was at $.40. Updated alerts went on stating that the climb wasn’t over and to buy at $0.40 – $1.20 per share. I will say that those who timed it well, made a ton of money if they sold their shares around $1.85 – $2.00. It hit a high of $2.00 before closing at $1.85. In just two trading days it closed at $0.48.

During the entire 10 trading days from when they first talked about WDAS.PK, the stock went up and back down again to where the ride started at. As of this past Friday, Nov. 20th, it closed at $.20 per share. Was it good to “play” this stock tip? Only if you were able to watch the day to day activity of the stock, was it worth it. The stock came down a lot quicker than it went up. I’m sure many didn’t get out in time and suffer a loss.

My advice to you is to do your own research and not to take anyone’s advice at face value. Just because someone or some website says it good, doesn’t make it so. I know it may be harder to do research on companies that trade on the pink sheets because usually these companies don’t have analyst watching them. Some information is out there, but you have to watch for fluff articles that publicist put out to help boast interest in the company.

Online penny stock trading has been a big favorite among the home-gamers trying to make it in the stock market. I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it…You can make a boat-load of money in trading penny stocks, but you can lose it just the same in a bad penny stock investment. I’ve watched stocks go up 30%- 150% in just one day, only to see them come down to even lower levels the next day. Yes, some people did make money, but only the ones that were aware of the situation to sell on the first day.

To make matters worse, it seems that some of these penny stock sites will go ahead and inform you that a stock they’ve been following has climbed 40% or better (but if you’re like me and doubt many different trading strategies offered on the web), you’ll might see that they really didn’t start announcing their praise until the stock in question had already rose in value. If you don’t do your research and your homework on any stock you want to buy, you can’t blame anyone but yourself for the consequences. If you fell for the hype that some of these websites spew out on a daily basis, you will have lost most (if not all) of your money.

Take into consideration that even a broken clock is right twice a day. These websites will at times get it right and pick a company’s stock that will climb by leaps and bounds. If you get in at the right time, you will profit from their recommendation.