So, I have been playing around with penny stock trades
 

The commissions eat up tiny trades and I was just playing around...
Total $174 loss of which $163 was commissions


I got in late on an APS promo.. Still a decent price gain
BUY FARE 0324 0.2700 1/07 $99 ($12)
SEL FARE 0324 0.3085 1/08 $88 ($12)
-----
-$11 LOSS ($24 Comm) (UP)


I was trying to buy .0001s and for some reason ended up with .0002s. I had no interest in holding it at .0002 because I wanted to be in at .0001.. Overall stupid trade.
BUY PCFG 386k 0.0002 1/08 $90 ($12)
SEL PCFG 386k 0.0002 1/08 $66 ($12)
-----
-$24 LOSS ($24 Comm) (EE)

Bought this based on some promotion I cannot remember, I was looking for it to go to .37 but I got out because it didn't PR like I expected,
BUY HUSA 0205 0.2710 1/11 $65 ($12)
SEL HUSA 0205 0.3066 1/14 $52 ($10)
-----
-$13 LOSS ($22 Comm) (UP)

Bought based on a big huge promotion and expected it to hit .0040... I tried to get in that morning when it went from .0014 to .0028 within a few minutes, but I was waiting for another trade to execute and free up some money.... When it hit .0064 I sold but I used a market order (huge stupid mistake)
BUY COWI 15kk 0.0028 1/14 $54 ($10)
SEL COWI 15kk 0.0051 1/16 $67 ($12)
-----
+$13 WIN ($22 Comm) (UP)


The dumbest trade ever, not sure why I bought it much less why I bought it in two trades.. Stupid trade.
BUY GBEN 1815 0.0479 1/15 $94 ($12)
BUY GBEN 2171 0.0425 1/15 $106 ($14)
SEL GBEN 3986 0.0300 1/16 $102 ($18)
-----
-$98 LOSS ($44 Comm) (DN)


Had e-mails from several promoters, it was all over the boards, bla bla bla.. Something funny started going on, I don't know if it was dilution or insiders selling off into the buying or what but it didn't feel right and I escaped
BUY ZPPB 0510 0.3045 1/16 $162 ($14)
SEL ZPPB 0510 0.2600 1/17 $121 ($13)
-----
-$41 LOSS ($27 Comm) (DN)



So I am down, thus far. Just wanted to be sure that my hater club has something to chew on. Epitome and herman and dirty F and bigtimer and did I miss anyone??? :1orglaugh

congrats with pennies

Glutton for punishment.

I thought you were recently bragging about making money on your trades when I said you were wanting your money and had better odds in Vegas?

Ah, yes, I remember... You were up 300% percent.

It's easy to be reckless with other people's money.

Relax
I have just been playing around learning how to trade

you pay too much in comissions, whats your broker?

i have been playing with my penis... much more fun...

Oh yes..
Yes!!

Sharebuilder. Cockbyte motherfuckers.

MB Trading is going to be a-lot better. I would like to use IB but they have a 10k minimum :(

What is the length of time on each, diving in and jumping out again fairly fast or?

Well, the dates are there..
Now that I sort of know what I am doing a little bit, next time I do some trading I'll probably be in each trade 1-2 days ..... There's a pattern day trade rule that doesn't let you trade very much if your account is under 25k, though, because the SEC is ridiculous and stupid

Sorry, I didn't notice the dates.

1: Buy
2: Send the spam
3: Sell

Gld short at under 159. Hopefully it gets there soon but I think that is the trade of the year.

I use IB and they are simply best for penny stocks. with mbtrading and other brokerages, you will have problems with their clearing firm Apex (former Pension).
you can also use choicetrade as they have a good clearing firm.

btw. see my thread about pennystocks here:
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1040174&highlight=spin
main stock actually got destroyed, but it went up as high as 150 percent.
second one 500 hundred percent gain and i expect to grow it a bit more
third one around 50 percent gain and i expect to grow it a bit more

Expensive lessons learned and so not likely to be forgotten!

Refine your technique and you will get it right. Look for a penny stock that is being manipulated, determine the pattern and time of day that it ait bottoms and peaks, then go from there.

:2 cents:

never place orders under a 800 minimum, otherwise you are paying to much administration

:1orglaugh

Oh, okay.. I didn't know if you wanted to know more about the tod I made the trades, or what

I see some major support over the past few months at the 160.5 level .... I don't see the 159 but the charts aren't wonderful on BB stocks, either. .. I would have waited for it to break support a little more than a dollar, if it were me... or are you shorting based on fundamentals of some sort?

The way these are priced is always funny.. trying to figure out what intraday highs and lows mean seems like a real exercise in futility to me, most times. These lessons I wouldn't call them expensive- I just wanted to get a "feel" for trading. Most of them were based on half of nothing and just me dicking around :)

I spent a LOT of time culling my subscribtions to newsletters and have it down to a few promoters which seem to be successful most times.. I STILL don't understand why a giant like awesome penny stocks will be so successful and do a 400k promo and then turn around and do one for "10,200 BRL" which is nowhere near as successful (on SWVI).. I guess maybe they got shares, too?? Still - they didn't make much of a promo of it.

Basically I unsubscribed from all of the stupid ones which often do 5k promos and don't have much success. . I tried to determine their worth based on things like alexa rank for their main sites and shit like that but it doesn't seem to mean anything anymore

What's so funny OG :1orglaugh

I'm thinking that trades should be at minimum 500 bucks, otherwise even $9 commissions are too high of a percentage.

I mean, hell, by the time you make a trade of say 200 bucks .. 20 in commissions is 10% ... no one can do that great if they're beat 10% from the start!! If you have to beat that and the spread, fuck, just it's almost impossible.

Could you elaborate on that a little? I'm still trying to figure out for sure what a "true ecn broker" is... I know I don't want anyone with a "dealing desk" where they try to match orders internally before they go out to the market..... The MB Trading guy on the phone told me that they're an "exn" broker which is essentially the same thing??

Checks are "payable to apex" so that sounds like you know what you're talking about.. http://www.mbtrading.com/commissions.aspx?page=Stocks Here it says something about "proprietary MBTR routing engine" and I can't find any information on that anywhere

At this rate Etrade is looking really good too because of their software- it looks solid and can do just about everything important (especially real LII which I think is available on most pennies... the companies just have to pay a small fee and most OCTQB seem to have it)

I WOULD LOVE to be able to use IB!!!



Do you allow trading of sub penny stocks? 0.0001-.01 range? What is the commission on those, is it really limited to 5% of the total trade? Any surcharge?


Thanks
2013/01/16
02:10:25 IBCS Dear Mr.

Yes. If the stock is quoted in sub pennies on the exchange, we allow orders to be entered by the markets pricing convention. We do cap IB commissions at 5% of the total trade value. There is still the $1.00 minimum. I have provided some additional highlights that should help you while you are in the process of choosing a broker below.

Compare us to other brokers. It's important to search 'report 606' and the brokers name for anyone you consider. You will see if their orders are being routed to exchanges or market makers that pay for a first look at your orders.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1340

See how IB's conservative investment strategy over the last 35 years has lead to what we believe is the safest place to keep your hard earned assets.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=2334

Application: We provide 24 hours a day application support. You will see a suite of options to request help during the online application that should take no longer than 20 minutes.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4695

Customer service 24 hours a day. If you should have any additional questions, please call us immediately.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=1560

Regards,
Salvatore

I've also heard that some brokers let YOU decide which MM to route your orders through... Like suretrader I think was one of them? That would be fucking NICE.

PS: Does IB have good borrows? I know it'll be a long time before I can afford to short stocks, an a lot of pennies ain't shortable, but that would be great if they did.

im laughing at you in real life. not 'lol' but laughing, in real life.

CS gives me all his penis trades:2 cents:

Thank you for that unsolicited testimonial ~Fred Sanford~

so the problem with Apex clearing (former pension clearing) is described here:

http://www.damngoodpennypicks.com/pe...cial-services/ - " other rules such as an “illiquidity” rule which applies new fees to thinly traded penny stocks or in some cases simply disallows the trading of penny stocks that are illiquid."

all the brokers using APEX clearing have those bullshit rules about trading illiquid penny stocks. you will be forbiden to sell/buy penny stocks in big volumes.

more on APEX clearing here:
http://www.damngoodpennypicks.com/pennystocks/?s=penson

Ah! That is what suretrader talks about, too

ILLIQUID STOCKS


All clients of our firm in aggregate cannot trade in excess of 10% of the previous 20 business day average trading volume of any stock on any day regardless of the stock's price. In addition, for stocks trading below $1 per share, clients cannot ever trade more than 25% of the current day's trading volume. There also cannot at anytime ever be more than 5,000,000 shares of any one stock settling during any 3 business day settlement period for our entire firm. If a client trades in excess of these restrictions, then their accounts will be subject to fees and interest charges and possible buy in or sell out of the violating position during the 3-day settlement period of those trades. There will be a $300 fee for any trade that is in violation of this policy. The interest charges will then be assessed on an illiquidity requirement imposed on the clearing firm, which could be many times the value of the trade. The interest rates charged to clients who violate these restrictions will be a minimum overnight rate of 15% of the illiquidity requirement. These are only guideline amounts and lower trading volumes can also trigger illiquid charges, which will be passed through as well. Repeated violations of this policy will result in the account being closed.

Now how in the world am I supposed to know what's settling across the whole darned firm? Does that not basically say, hey, we can take your money for some half *** reason out of the blue and you agreed to it....?

:disgust

Basically where I am at here is:

I'll just have to use e-trade because I'm poor

I tried to get IB to work with me on a smaller account and they won't :(

I told them I don't need margin or anything fancy at all ... but I think they probably think they'd lose money by giving me account (in terms of what it costs to provide any customer service, what the penny trades might cost them, etc)

It's very hard to move $800 worth of penny stock & very risky.


I used to play with them but it's just too fucking easy to lose and you really have to be able to day trade. If he can't day trade he should seriously forget about penny stocks.

I used to get $5 trades via ChoiceTrade.com when I was messing with them and that made it a bit easier to work around the commissions.

For myself it was more about experimenting and honestly it was also kinda like gambling but I limited the amount I traded in pennies. I had 2 ways of trading them 1 worked the other failed.

The first, I limited my buys to around $250-500 and that was based on the volume it was trading on but $500 was always the cut off. I trading strictly on volume & momentum. I didn't give a shit about the company and I did everything possible to be out of the stock the same day I bought it.

Doing it this way was the only way I found any success with pennies and you had to have a live trade tracker subscription to do this. You couldn't use dome crap website giving you only 15 min updates.

The second way was via spending a lot of time reading forums looking for up coming stuff, and doing buys from 200-500. However this way almost always meet with failure, because almost all penny stocks are pump & dump scams.

The thing is with the economy the way it is now, "real" stocks are always bouncing up and down, so it's much easier to just put a bit more money in and play with real stocks that are in the 3-5 dollar range and likely make more than fucking with pennies..

There is no set predetermined $ limit... as long as you're not too high of a percentage of trade volume (and the volume isn't wash trading) you should be able to get in and out without a problem..

That god damned day trade rule really pisses me off
But
I have never not found a way around anything I didn't like, yet

Then do Forex trades. You can do as many of those as you like.

The Day trading rule is tricky and you can still break it even if you only do 3 trades in 5 days. The SEC considers a "day trade" as any trade that you buy & sell on the same open & close day.

It just depends how strict your broker is.. I got away with quite a few because I always had extra cash in my account so I wasn't flipping stocks using the same cash I just sold with. There is a 3 day settle period for every trade hence the reason for the rule as it was abused to death by margin traders in the past.

the cheapest one with good clearing firms for penny stocks are now, excluding IB, scottrade and choicetrade(they exchanged their clearing firm for a better one just one month ago).

Forex is interesting but my I don't know if I'm sharp enough to figure it all out :( I was looking at those clowns who promote these binary options trading things (where as I understand it you can buy extremely short term options) for currencies but I think it's a scam because they manipulate the quotes.. It does seem like a-lot of people have success just following the money- like they're using candles and ma's and all of that and it's pretty reliable because everyone else is also following them, I guess. Any way you could find to follow the banks and their trading would be very successful, too, I would think.

If you could trade outside of pairs one could make a fkn fortune over and over and over again. I thought of that years ago but it doesn't seem possible- but I think banks do it. Like if you could use USD to buy EUR and turn around and purchase JPY without converting back to your baseline currency first, and so on. That would be NICE :winkwink: But- someone told me you'd have to have actual "delivery" in order to do that (whatever that means).

The pdt rule is fucking bullshit because all it does is fuck with poor people. As you say- usually if you've got extra cash in your account as I understand it you won't trigger a warning. Also, I think you can have multiple accounts across several brokerages and get around it that way, too. Plus, a-lot of brokers just won't bother to fuck with you if you don't get too out of hand.. I'm not sure if the SEC will fuck with you anyway at a certain point??

But I am not too worried about the dollar amount of the trades so long as I don't end up being over a few percentage points of the trading volume. Unless you're fucking with pnks or greys and shit like that it usually shouldn't be a problem... Now if you're looking to make huge trades every time I definitely agree most of these pennies would not work for you though.

Ah, thank you.. Finding a good broker is very difficult.
There definitely is no broker that "has it all" ESPECIALLY if you don't have a-lot of cash to open an account.

E*Trade: E*Trade Clearing LLC (essentially self-clearing)
Interactive Brokers: Straight self-clearing

As of June 1/12
Scottrade self clearing (except advanced options orders which clear through Apex Clearing)

Choicetrade website:
Mail checks to:
Apex Clearing Corporation
c/o Ridge Clearing & Outsourcing



Does that mean they're still using apex?
It seems like some of these brokers don't want people to easily be able to determine what clearing house they use.. And if you find it on "some website" it could be dated information.. Looking at who the checks are payable to seems to be the best way?

Choicetrade..

Our normal commission of $5 per trade on NASDAQ and Exchange-listed stocks does not apply to Bulletin Board or Pink Sheet stock orders.
Commission for BB/PK stocks is $7 per trade up to 500,000 shares. For OTC orders over 500,000 shares, add 1% of the total dollar

That's not horrible I suppose

Scottrade, pretty much the same thing:
For stocks priced under $1, add 1/2% of the principal value to the commissions shown.

So that would lead me to believe that they're both using the same clearing house- but how do you find out who it actually is? It should be easier

Then they want to charge for level II and who knows if they have shares to short of anything.. What a pain in the balls. Finding a broker is a bitch.

Best thing to do in stocks is invest for the longrun in world dominators...

Sure
That never destroyed millions of idiots lives and retirements before :1orglaugh