The stock message boards of today are cess pools for online criminals known as paid promoter's who pump stocks on these boards to line their pockets with your hard earned money. How they do it? it's simple if you know how it works.
Scams start with the promoter's where they pump a stock to huge gains and get out while regular investors are getting in and scratching their heads as to why all of a sudden the stock lost 75% of it's value. The promoter's are required by law to have a disclaimer and that is big part of the problem!. Hardly any of them have a disclaimer.
Paid promotion has changed over the years and the name "market awareness" is now the one they use. By using the market awareness title the promoter's make it more professional and business like but it's not. The reason it is not is because they are still taking advantage of investors. They post hundreds of messages on stock boards all over the internet about how the stock is poised for great gains, how well the company is doing and a load of other things making the company sound like it's a great investment.
Some of these stock message boards have been investigated by the SEC and crackdowns have occurred in the past because they allow this behavior to occur on the boards in which they run. These promoter's might talk bad about a stock one day but then as soon as they are paid to promote it, it's like the best stock ever to them that they have ever seen. Most investors new to stock message boards don't even realize this occurs until it's too late.
I have said in a previous article that investors lose thousands of dollars because of this and it is crazy at how many more investors continue down this path today. When will this stop? No one can say for sure but investors are becoming more aware of which boards this is happening on and getting away from it. Do yourself a favor and get away from the cess pools that exist today!