Many of the companies you are trading I am sure have been kicked out/disavoewd from other markets (NYSE, Nasdaq...etc. ) due to various dealings.....not often for good reasons.
You don't know that. Nor do I, because I can't remember a damned symbol to prove either side lol. It was over 1o years ago. I'll put it this way, there are a lot of small companies that trade on the the ix's that simply aren't big companies yet. That's all it is...company scale.
But, I don't know where we are missing each other. I don't really care. This isn't a game of morals. Companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Exxon et al are not moral or ethical companies. People lost their shirt in AIG, in Citibank, in Ford etc. Even people who didn't own that stock got crushed. People were losing their homes, jobs were hemorrhaging.
But even that does'nt matter. If I was still in the game, i'd trade those if the prices were right. All I care is what I can buy it for and what I can sell it for. That's what day traders do. Sometimes, I could make thousands per trade, some days you are just chipping away. Some days, you take a beating. But all that matters is what you have at the end. And I did pretty well trading $2.00 and usually $.50....with some exceptions. But that was the general area. I did very very well for someone who had only done it seriously for 2-3 years.
I figured it out brother... what you are saying, doesn't really apply to day traders. They know enough about the company to know it's not just a name. They've analyzed it's trading data over many periods of time. In many different circumstances, in good and bad. They check the news to see what's happening. Basically just checking that the stocks in play that day are stable. Know what I mean? The caution you are advising, is sort of built into the job. There is no investment. With as few exceptions as possible, you start every day, and end every day, owning nothing.
Investing, I totally see the need for caution. It's smaller companies, usually less oversight, or knowledge into the exact details of what is going on. They are less stable. If you are investing over time, it's very bad odds on average sub $1.00 companies. I only need to know if I can play it that day.
Perhaps everything you say
IS applicable, and I'm just handy with it. It wouldn't be the first thing I've had a knack for. And I'm willing to take that compliment.
Much respect.
I wouldn't invest much, but why not? If things get rolling, and more and more companies go public, at the current price you could make a good buck right? Like investing in bit coin on day one?
You can totally invest. But there is always caveat emptor, buyer beware.
And this is where I think
@Homesteader 's comments stem from. Many people think that the odds are "ok" that you will hit a Bitcoin type stock, or Amazon or whatever. It's excruciatingly unlikely. There was an experiment done many years ago (I was in high school, so before '96) where they had several stock analysts pick the bests stocks, and they had a monkey point to the trading page and point to stuff and picked that. The monkey did better.
The odds of hitting an Apple or Bitcoin, are so small, that it's much like investing your savings into lottery tickets, thinking you will win. You
might. But odds are many millions:1 that you don't. And when investing, that has to be considered. You have to know that this is a super long shot, and invest accordingly. A lot of people don't.
It's legal gambling, and they will clean you out any way possible. My only point was I'm only interested in the gaps I can exploit during a given day, so it doesn't matter to a day trader if it's a crap stock. All I know is if I'm handy, I can buy it for __ and sell it for __ and eTrade puts the money in my bank account.
But with long term...people need to consider the risk. Which is that, it's very likely, never going to happen.
