Question: "How do you determine who the best stock promoters are?"

So what makes a good promoter? Many people would respond that it's a promoter who can make a stock price increase dramatically when they announce it as their "pick." There is some truth to this. However, there is one angle that I frequently see new traders overlook. When it comes to trading pumps, or any stock for that matter, VOLUME is key. You could have a stock go up 100%+, but this would do you absolutely no good if the stock isn't trading volume. Let's use a promotion from Friday as an example, USNU:

On paper, USNU looks great. The previous day it closed at $0.104, and Friday it hit a high of $0.343. Many people will look at this and say, "Wow, a gain of over 200%!" In fact, the promoter will even claim this pick as a "win" based off of those facts alone. Here's what people fail to notice. When USNU was announced, it traded under $0.30 for only two minutes. During these two minutes, it only traded about 10,000 shares below $0.20 and only 24,000 shares below $0.30! The opportunity to make that 200%+ didn't really exist. It would have been nearly impossible to get an execution on this stock at the ground floor, because hardly any shares at all were traded! Some people would try the "get in at any cost approach" and be the unfortunate buyers that purchased this stock above $0.30 (not coincidentally where most of the volume occurred). Ask yourself, if you were one of these buyers, would you still be long the stock an hour later when it had dipped to $0.17? Liquidity and volume is KEY to trading; without that, a high-odds play doesn't exist. Don't let yourself be one of the suckers who sees the 200%+ claim and decides that the promoter is worth following. Make sure the volume is real and the result is actually realistic.

Let's compare USNU to a promotion that actually did trade volume, just as a reference point. Just this weekend, stocktips.com released WPWR as their new pick. Compare Day 1 of this promotion to USNU:

Unlike our previous example, WPWR traded real volume. About 800,000 shares traded below $0.22, and even more shares traded pre-market, well below $0.20. Would fills have still been difficult with this stock? Absolutely. It's tough to buy any OTC stock into strength, which is why it's important to have the right brokers. However, in this case the possibility for profits existed because there was plenty of volume.

Sure, it looks easy enough in hindsight, but how do you know in the moment which promotion is going to trade good volume and have high odds of spiking? This is where knowing promoter history comes in so handy. Let's look at recent "Stock Tips" promotions, starting with the oldest:

As you can see, "Stock Tips" has been consistently improving with each promotion they've run. The volume has steadily increased with each promotion (trading millions of shares throughout is plenty), and each promotion has run for multiple days. Given these facts, it was very likely that their new pick this morning would trade high volume and have a strong open. By saving emails from "Stock Tips," you could look back at previous picks and draw this conclusion for yourself or create a document to track the performance of their picks so you have that to refer to. Either way, it is important to have a way to check a promoter's history so that you can make better decisions.

One important thing to note is that past performance in no way guarantees future results. Use past performance to help guide your decisions, but don't make the mistake of thinking anything is guaranteed. You must still pay careful attention to the price action and be willing to sell if the promotion starts to fail. A "hold and hope" strategy will only work for so long. Once you run into your first "money-grab" promotion, you will get destroyed if you're unwilling to adapt. What is a "money-grab?" An old promoter known as "Awesome Penny Stocks" had a reputation for huge volume and multi-day runs. They were considered the best promoter out there. Let me show you a daily chart of one of their "money-grab" promotions:

Point made? At the end of the day, you're buying a scam. Never forget that and trade scared, because one day that attitude will save you.

With all that in mind, below I will share a portion of my promoters list so that you can see how I organize it. Who the "Hot" stock promoters are changes pretty frequently, and these days there aren't very many quality promoters left, due to larger awareness of scams and increased SEC halts. I do not endorse these promoters and am in no way affiliated with them, but I do believe they are still worth following. Remember, buying stock promotions is a VERY risky strategy and should not be attempted until you have a good degree of familiarity:

11/3/14 EDIT: LOL a few short months later, ALL of the promoters I had listed no longer exist! Currently stocktips.com is the only promoter left who has proven they can produce volatile picks that have good volume.

Hope this helps. Please send any questions my way!