Making Cents in Penny Stocks

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The occasional shower of pennies from heaven might do our bank accounts some good, but we Fools can't say the same for penny stocks. The world of penny stocks is often full of manipulation and deceit, making it harder for investors to separate its few good offerings from the multitude best ignored.

Still, many investors dabble at the low end of the stock-price spectrum. At Motley Fool CAPS, we award the "Pennies" title to investors who rate stocks trading in the single digits more than half the time. Believe it or not, you'll find some of the best CAPS All-Stars among those members.

Pinching pennies
This week, we'll look at some of the low-priced investments these All-Stars have praised. If the best investors regularly scanning this end of the market have singled out these companies, we might want to turn our umbrellas upside-down -- or run for cover!

Here's the latest list of low-priced stocks with All-Star support:

Company

Price+

CAPS Rating (out of 5 max)

CAPS Member

Member Rating

Flow International (Nasdaq: FLOW)

$5.66

****

vanamonde

99.98

Oilsands Quest (AMEX: BQI)

$3.76

****

goldminingXpert

99.96

Ascent Solar Technologies (Nasdaq: ASTI)

$7.70

***

tuffsledding

99.87

Horsehead Holding (Nasdaq: ZINC)

$8.30

****

Tankota

99.87

Ambac Financial (NYSE: ABK)

$5.60

*

Rox6525

99.54

Price when the outperform call was made.

Your two cents' worth
When an industry is in as much turmoil as the U.S. credit and financial markets, the stocks of leaders like Ambac Financial and MBIA (NYSE: MBI) are likely to be extremely volatile as they try to work their way out of their troubles. CAPS member Herecometheblind indicates he bought Ambac stock and watched it become a yo-yo, but fully expects it to recover.

I have watched this stock for the past several months and have been happily surprised. … While there is still some volatility here, I will be long on this stock. Over the next year I expect to see this stock in the mid twenties or higher. Great buy!

Despite big drops recently, oil prices are still at triple-digit levels. CAPS member bajaisaak believes Oilsands Quest is prudently managing its reserves for the long term, making it an attractive takeover candidate.

BQI owns an unthinkable amount of land, and have hit oil with every drill in the ground. They are developing the resource at a prudent pace. Some multinational energy firm looking to boost reserves and gain a foothold into the world's most politically secure energy source will come along and take them over. Buy it now before it's gone.

With high energy costs over the past year, the solar industry has sought to develop new technologies like thin film solar panels. Certainly, Ascent Solar Technologies, First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR), and others want to see it become the preferred method of manufacture over polysilicon-based alternatives. Top-rated All-Star CAPS member mkeszler thinks Ascent has a favorable future.

High risk, high reward opportunity. Solar is a competitive industry with awesome growth potential. There will be spectacular gains, as well as dismal flops. This outfit may go either way, but risk-reward looks appealing. They have over $6/share in cash and book value of over $7, so they should be able to hang in there until profitability.

Make some change
What do you think? Should we fill up the change jar with these penny stocks, or ignore 'em like a discarded coin on the street? It pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page. Consult our free CAPS investor-intelligence community, where your two cents count as much as anyone else's.

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Horsehead Holding is a Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation. Try any of our Foolish newsletters today, free for 30 days.

Fool contributor Rich Duprey does not have a financial position in any of the stocks mentioned in this article. You can see his holdings. The Motley Fool's disclosure policy always wins the coin toss.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On September 10, 2008, at 3:56 AM, lukematt wrote:

    In general, I like Motley Fool very much. However, I have one pet peeve that Motley Fool never fails to incite.

    Rich Duprey wrote: “The world of penny stocks is often full of manipulation and deceit.” It goes right along with Motley Fool’s “Discussion Boards” policy—“Bear in mind that the Fools do not open folders for stocks trading at $5.00 dollars or below”.

    1. In our current era, seasoned investors know that manipulation occurs with stocks in **all price ranges**.

    For example, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox recently took action to prevent manipulation by short sellers in the shares of 19 major financial institutions (reference: Los Angeles Times article “SEC moves to curb stock manipulation” [July 16, 2008]). Here’s a list of the 19 companies: Allianz, BNP Paribas Securities, Bank of America Corp., Barclays, Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group, Daiwa Securities Group Inc., Deutsche Bank Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS.

    How many “penny stocks” can Motley Fool find in this list?

    2. What happens when a stock that has been trading far above $5 per share for its entire history gradually moves below $5? For example, from its 52-week high of $30.61, SiRF Technology Holdings’ share price (symbol: SIRF) has declined to yesterday’s $2.16 (and even lower). Did Motley Fool suddenly declare that the stock became susceptible to manipulation precisely at the moment that the share price crossed the $5 threshold?

    [Personally, I think that a share price decline from $30.61 to $2.16 in less than a year indicates the manipulation probably began at $30.61.]

    3. At some time in the future, I hope Motley Fool will reconsider its “attitude”. In the meantime, as an example, the following websites all have discussion boards for China Kangtai Cactus Bio-Tech Inc. (symbol: CKGT), which closed yesterday at $0.56:

    InvestorsHub

    InvestorVillage

    Raging Bull

    Reuters Stock Buzz

    Stockhouse

    P.S. To associate Horsehead Holding (symbol: ZINC) with the term "penny stock" is ludicrous.

  • Report this Comment On September 11, 2008, at 5:53 AM, TMFCop wrote:

    lukematt,

    Obviously not every penny stock is a sham, but the fact that quite a few are makes the warning about dabbling there reasonable. They are often (not always) illiquid, thinly traded stocks. There's a reason that pump-and-dump scam artists use them.

    And just because a stock trades below $5 doesn't mean it automatically falls into that category, though under the strict definition it is a "penny stock." And just because a stock trades above $5 and is valued in the billions doesn't mean it's not a sham either. Enron and Worldcom were proof enough of that. Yet the exceptions prove the rule.

    As for the term as it's used in CAPS, that's just any stock trading under $10. So a single digit stock is called a penny even though it's not technically one. With ZINC trading at $8 a share, it earns the title here.

    Rich

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Related Tickers

11/30/2009 4:00 PM
ASTI $4.45 Down -0.05 -1.11%
Ascent Solar Techn… CAPS Rating: ***
ZINC $11.22 Down -0.29 -2.52%
HORSEHEAD HOLDING… CAPS Rating: *****
FSLR $119.11 Down -1.19 -0.99%
First Solar, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
BQI $1.21 Down -0.03 -2.42%
Oilsands Quest, In… CAPS Rating: *****
MBI $3.46 Up +0.06 +1.76%
MBIA, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
ABK $0.77 Down -0.03 -3.75%
Ambac Financial Gr… CAPS Rating: *
FLOW $2.51 Up +0.02 +0.80%
Flow International… CAPS Rating: ****

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