But you need to use wisdom and some reliable advices from experienced traders to make money out of it. And if you are solely investing because of huge dividends, you might not succeed in your online trading career. You cannot just buy stocks a day before it goes ex-dividend then the next day, sell them and receive your dividend. The shifts of stock market are unpredictable. The stock prices might go down by the amount as the dividend. For example, a certain company has a share price of 100p and its dividend payout is 5 %, when it finally goes ex-dividend, it will be reduced to 95p. So no matter how high the offered dividend is, you need to consider a lot of factors in making good profits. And going in and out of stocks just before they go ex-dividend will not work for you if you aren’t that wise.

The secret? You have to find a company that is currently oversold and is about to pay a full year dividend in the next months with stock screening software. A lot of traders often buy those that are due to make good dividends few weeks or months before the stock goes ex-dividend. And if the share is oversold, be assured that you are in a very promising position since the stock price will sure to go up.

There’s a common perception that they are very risky, and there is some truth to this. The risk is not caused by the low price of the penny stocks. Many foreign exchanges typically price even their blue-chips in share prices which are less than a dollar. And because penny shares are not marginable in North American brokerage accounts – which means your broker won’t lend money against their value – they are actually less risky than stocks that trade for higher prices, as the most you can lose with pennies is your initial investment.

But there are some ways in which penny stocks are riskier than stocks that trade for higher prices if you’re not good at understanding the stock market. They tend to be smaller companies, and thus their management is not typically comparable in quality to that larger companies where the remuneration paid to executives can be much higher. Their smaller capitalizations make them more subject to insider manipulation. And they tend to be involved in riskier enterprises such as mining exploration.

In addition to the added risk, there are some other difficulties in trading penny stocks which you should consider. Institutional investors – such as mutual funds and pension funds – avoid them because they are too illiquid to buy in large quantities. This creates a problem for the retail investor as well. If you accumulate a large position in a penny stock you may find it very difficult to reduce your position. There simply may not be enough buyers who wish to buy your stock on any given day. In fact, some penny stocks are so illiquid that they do not trade every day. This illiquidity leads to another problem in trading them: the large bid-ask spreads. The bid-ask spread is the difference between the bid price and the asking price of a share.

In penny stocks it can sometimes be very large, with the difference representing a large percentage of the share’s value. With penny stocks it’s important not to put in market orders unless you’re confident that the spread is small, and that there is sufficient volume trading to fill your order. Otherwise, make it a practice only to use limit orders, and be patient. Volatility is another problem with penny stocks. For this reason you should generally avoid using stop-losses, particularly with very thinly traded issues, as you can easily be stopped out of a position simply by routine trading swings.

Penny stocks are risky, but they can also be rewarding. Returns of 100 percent, 500 percent, or even 1000 percent or more do happen. And since you can only lose a maximum of 100 percent on any single trade, you don’t need to pick a winner every time in order to make a significant return on your investment. Just be sure to limit the portion of your portfolio invested in penny stocks, and then pick a basket of them, rather than putting all of your money into a single name or two. Trading penny stocks can increase your investment returns, provided you trade them with caution, and are fully aware

Buying penny stocks can be very rewarding or quite damaging to your portfolio. Research must be done to minimize the risks and increase the gains. You must look into the company’s history to see their growth in the sector that they are in. Most companies that are considered a penny stock (valued less than $5.00) are in technologies, biotech, and alternative energies. There are few that are in the other sectors like GameZnFlix (OTCBB: GMFX) which is traded on the OTCBB (over-the-counter bulletin board). The company is in the business of entertainment. Like Blockbuster and Netflix, they have an on-line video and games rental program.

The reason I speak of them is that in buying penny stocks if you don’t look at the company’s fundamentals you can lose a lot of money. You don’t have to go too far in the history, just enough to get the idea of what the risks are. In September, 2007 the company went ahead and offered a reverse-split for the outstanding stocks. For every ten shares that you owned they gave you one. They value was adjusted to be worth the same so you didn’t lose the value of the holdings. The new price was $0.10 a share. At that price you can buy 5000 shares totaling just $500. If the stock doubled (which is not hard for most stocks to do at this price range), you would make $500 on a $500 investment (a return of 100%). Unfortunately the company’s fundamentals were not in order as well as a positive revenue and the share price went down. Needless to say that the value of the stock has fallen to an all time low of $0.0001, which now makes the value of your holdings $0.50 (yes, that is 50 cents.)

At this point and you were to purchase 500,000 shares at $0.0001 it would cost you only $50. If this company was to turn it around (which I don’t expect) and the stock price went up to $0.10 the penny stock investment value of your portfolio would be worth $50,000 (a return of 1000%)

When you are buying penny stocks you need to know what the company is doing to grow. If you don’t, you risks may be more than you willing to take.