Don’t click that link

The current tidal wave of spam is overwhelmingly focused on touting penny stocks, which promise quick riches with small investments. Any sensible person knows to run from these scams, but it’s useful to get hard data proving what a bad deal these things are. Which is why I was interested when I stumbled across the Spam Stock Tracker. Although the data is slightly outdated now (last update was August 2006), the lesson is pretty clear, and adding more data would probably just increase the confidence level rather than change the overall number.

On May 5th, 2005 (05/05/05 spooky!) I set out to determine just how much money I could lose by trusting SPAM.

What if I purchased 1000 shares of stock from EVERY stock tip mentioned in a SPAM email? Could we all really be missing out on a great opportunity?

Out of 105 stocks on the list, all but three lost money; 40 declined by more than 80% and another 30 went down 100% - in other words, to zero - meaning if you bought and held, you wound up with absolutely nothing from your original “investment.”

I would imagine the percentages are about the same for sites that sell phony Rolexes and prescription drugs. If you send money to someone trying to sell you something via spam, you’re most likely to get nothing. And if you send them your credit card number, you’re likely to wind up paying for that error in judgment for a long, long time.