Down...apparently
This is what has me baffled, not the posting of picks but some of the hype and (seemingly misplaced) confidence that comes with them - this was the recent update:
I sold on market open set my sell order last night.[...]
But earlier in the month, it was supposed to be a great pick on the basis (in part) of the previous recommendation (which was a tip from a friend) having gone up a bit:
Well last time I posted a recommendation on here it has went from £2.40 to above £3.30 in only just over a month. KISTOS for reference.
My next recommendation is TGA (Thungela Resources). It's a coal mining company.
[...]
Their cashflow situation today their stock should be valued at closer to £6-£9 rather than the £4.62 it currently sits at. This stock is stupidly undervalued. as always go away and DYOR and I think you will find that it concurs with my info that the stock is stupidly undervalued and should be £6+ by the end of the year.
This one has gone from the £4.62 quoted there (near it's all-time high) to around £3.55 now.
These things are inherently volatile, you know before you get into them that they're going to bounce around a bit and sure enough this one did and the poster bailed. Yet reading the previous post he was full of confidence about it.
This isn't to knock the posting of stocks that might be of interest etc.. but just a good illustration to both be aware that these things are risky + to not get suckered into the hype. Encouraging others to look at particularly risky investments like this should come with a bit of uncertainty and a lot of caution not hype and overly confident predictions of huge returns.
There is always going to be some attractive narrative about how some small-cap stock or other is full of potential, if anyone has browsed online forums dedicated to this stuff for a few years they'll have seen the same thing time and time again - people get excited over some small-cap or other and inevitably some people get suckered into silly punts with a significant % of their portfolio.
I've seen it happen plenty of times which is why it is worth calling out.
Also worth remembering that, though it's been cleaned up a bit these days, the AIM market has attracted quite a few sharks in the past - there were a few dozen companies on that market in the 00s (linked to one particularly shady individual) that were almost guaranteed to fail. I don't think things are that blatant these days and I'm certainly not saying the companies mentioned here are like those (the first one recommended, as I said before, looks like it has a solid management team in place).
My main point is that the hype you see with this stuff is often BS, there are some interesting things on there both on AIM + small-cap companies on the main market (as in this case) but no they're not likely seriously undervalued in most cases, the rest of the market aren't all total dunces and any given hot tip you might see online that ABC company is due to do X, Y, or Z and bring in $$$s might well pan out nicely but often carries a fair bit or risk with it too thus the company isn't at the higher price you think it ought to be worth etc.. and that is perhaps a reflection of the risk involved.