Nov 29, 2007
They are cold callers from some stock brokerage firm. They don't give up. When my wife answers (covering for me) and they ask for me, she says, "Not now, can I take a message?" they hang up. They touted PVX when I answered and I told the caller I wasn't opening any new accounts, period and hung up. One day later, they have made two MORE calls (we let it ring out) inside of 1/2 hour.
I have a warning for people being cold-called by ANY stock broker's customer man:
1) Before you respond to anything or anyone, rent and watch the movie "Boiler Room" and see how close their script is to the salesmen in this movie.
2) Any money you send to them will NEVER get back to you. Even if they are successful making you a profit, it will ALWAYS have to be re-invested in their latest tout. Eventually, they will cajole you that your account isn't big enough and that you should open a margin account. Margin (trading stocks with borrowed money) is almost always a 90% way of losing most of or all of your money, perhaps even more money than you invested to begin with.
3) Stocks go up, stocks go down. They might have a 55% chance of being right but a 45% chance of being wrong. THEY ARE NOT PRESCIENT; THERE IS NO GUARANTEE.
4) Stock investments always involve detailed record keeping for the IRS. You will be bombarded with mail from your broker that must be categorized and filed. If you are not an organized person, the stock market is NOT for you.
If you must get into the market, buy some good books, read a lot and do what is called due diligence on your stock choices. Then open a DISCOUNT BROKER account. The big names are Scottrade, TD Ameritrade and Fidelity. They are all good. Go to finance.yahoo.com and you will see their ads.