by ckchoy
What a topic?! I've never thought that I will write something that is perceived as 'high risk' or 'dangerous' to personal wealth. But, I realize that even though I try to avoid or stop mentioning it, beginners and newbies will find out and curious. Hence instead of trying to hide it, why don't openly discuss it, so that more people especially newbies can get more exposure to learn the pros and cons and ultimately, make more than lose more.
It is like parents/school used to try to stop children from sex curiosity; now school realize they can't stop it and instead give early sex awareness/education. It is like instead of stopping citizen from gambling, we built two IRs and at the same time promote problem gambling awareness to public.......ok stop the long stories and nonsense and let's start.
I learnt the excitement of penny counters punting that was back in 1999. It was the year when Sg Penny Stocks Bubble happened. Almost all the penny counters (from A-Z) valuation ran up way to high, about 10 times their actual value, or P/E more than hundred, few hundreds or even thousands, and worse, with no fundamental like asset value to back them up. Example, a counter which doing business in book selling valued at about 10 cents was speculated/manipulated/played up to $1. Sesdaq (now renamed to Catalist) which measured the performance of counters small in size compared to Main Board, surged from about 30 to 200 within 2 - 3 months, a very short period. The market volume was extremely high and almost all the people in the street joined the fun. Yes, it burst eventually. Till now, this penny stocks bubble scenario has never happened since then. I think it is because human learn from mistakes, human learn from lessons and human become smarter.
Let's jump back from 1999 to recent 2 to 3 years, ( because I started my career as a remisier since 2 years plus ago, hence I have better market homework memory from 2011 till now )in 2011 and 2012 market volume (including all, ie blue chips, big caps, small caps penny) was relative low, average about
1 billion per day. Yes, because of volume is not sustainable, hence penny stocks run was also not sustainable. In my memory, the best penny run period only
last about 2 weeks then pause/stop/pull back or even followed by a deeper correction before continued its on and off pop up play.
Started about in mid of Nov 2012, penny stocks have been in focus again, prices are catching up ( to their P/E and asset values ) and most importantly volume has been
building up and sustain. Market volume (including all, ie blue chips, big caps, small caps penny) is at average
4.8 billions per day (with record high at 12.2Bil a day), the volume is mostly generated by penny counters. This volume is relatively much higher compared to last 2 years, and also the longest run in my this 2 years experience, till now is about 3 months. Looking forward, there are more reasons for the penny counters run to continue and will not die down so soon:
1) fresh and sideline cash is waiting to pour in anytime ( fear of being left out )
2) although the run-up has begun and into 3 months, but it looks like the trend is still in the beginning as many penny counters are still in cheap valuation be it using P/E or asset value as guideline (do your own homework).
Discussion:
A conservative/low risk taker sees penny stocks play as a high risk game. But do not forget the analogy, high risk usually will couple with high return. There are real examples which my colleagues or even your friends can make few hundreds thousands in short time let's say within month or months which is good enough to pay 10 years living cost. Ask yourself how many cases blue chips investors can become rich in short time?
A brave, high risk taker sees penny stocks play as a high return tool. But also must be mindful, win big in short time may also can easily lose big in short time.
So what should we do now? Buy/sell/avoid/chase/play/follow?
Instead of paying too much attention on whether which are high risk or low risk investment/games, understand what you are doing is more important. Because if you know what you are doing, you will know how to handle it, and in turn it will mean a low risk game to you.
Which penny counters to play, and how to play are not the topics here. If you are interested, soon you will learn how to play. Once you know how to play, it is whether you can execute it right. And once you have the theory and the practical, this is not the end, you still have to proof it you can do it
consistently and finally be
persistent to your way.
Many people fail is not because of lack of knowledge nor lack of practical, they lack of
persistent.
