Tier 1 Penny Stocks: These are the penny stocks that we focus. They are listed on a major exchange like the NYSE or NASDAQ and are usually priced below $5.00 per share but can be a little higher priced than that. Tier 1 penny stocks are still speculative but less open to manipulation because they are required by the exchanges to provide financial information and are held to a higher standard than OTC penny stocks.
Tier 2 Penny Stocks: Traditional penny stocks, in my opinion, are stocks priced between 1 cent and 99 cents. They aren’t below 1 cent (if you didn’t already know, stocks can trade at fractions of a penny). It’s not uncommon to see a stock priced between 1 cent and 99 cents that is still listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ.
These companies will typically get a letter (which is made public), that they need to meet the listing requirements to have their stock above $1.00 within a certain amount of time. If they do it, the stock remains listed, if they can’t it will be de-listed and move to the OTC market exchange.
However, it’s very important to note that stocks that trade above $1.00 will never have a spread less than 1 penny. That means the stock will trade 1.01 x 1.02, or 1.05 by 1.06, but never 1.015 x 1.017. When a stock trades BELOW $1.00, the stocks will trade down to fractions of a penny.
Tier 3 Penny Stocks: Sub-Penny Stocks are stocks that are below 1 penny per share. So that starts at .0099. These will not be NYSE or NASDAQ stocks, so for that reason I wouldn’t trade them. These aren’t particularly noteworthy beyond the fact that the companies aren’t strong enough to even have their stock priced at 1 penny per share.
Tier 4 Penny Stocks: Trip Zero Stocks (Priced .0001 – .0009) Trip Zero Stocks are priced with 3 zeros. These are stocks priced between .0001 and .0009 per share.
As you can imagine these stocks after often used as vehicles for manipulation. Each increment the stock moves up is a 100% move versus the entry price of .0001.
Many of the “hot penny stock” alerts are on sub penny stocks or trip zero stocks and primarily benefit the people who first bought the stock.
If somebody buys 100mil shares at .0001 ($10k) and the stock goes up to .0010 they will sell with $100k in profits. Many of the stock promotion newsletters are sent by people who bought huge positions of these penny stocks.