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Penny stock is the term pertaining to stocks that are traded for less than a dollar. At present, most penny stocks have upgraded their starting investments to at least $5 per share. The Securities and Exchange Commission or the SEC has then changed the definition to accommodate the stocks that still have less than $5 minimum per share. But even so, the term penny stock is still being used by the industry because the notion that stocks are still sold for a dollar per share is still what most of the misinformed have in mind.

Investing in penny stocks may seem to be a very lucrative and appealing deal for anyone because, hey, you will never know how far your one-dollar might get you. However, no matter how tempting and profitable investing in penny stocks may appear to be, you must first know the ins and outs of penny stocks before you let go of your dollar.

When you invest in penny stocks, you are generally investing on the company's market capitalization. A market's capitalization is different from its stock prize and calculated by multiplying the amount of shares outstanding by its stock prize. The amount that you'll get from these figures will give you the total value of all the company's shares at a certain particular time.

What you should be wary about when investing in penny stocks is that the smaller the market capitalization of a company, the easier it is to be submerged in liquidity issues. If a company has smaller shareholders (probably because of the undesirable total value of a company shares) then it will not trade as much shares as any larger company would. The stock price will make it less "liquid" or less flexible and more likely to be affected by changes in the demand and supply of stocks.

A non-liquid stock can also mean that the stock you bought by investing in penny stocks can be difficult to re-sell. You may have to lower your prices just to be able to let go of these investments.

On the up side, investing in penny stocks may also be beneficial by a long shot because even with a low capital, there is still a potential for your investments to gain rapidly. Even so, it is very risky to be investing in penny stocks because as the saying goes, the higher you fly, the harder your fall will be.

Another problem that you may encounter when investing in penny stocks is that most of the companies involved in this type of trading are fairly new players on the business. A new company may not be as well-established as a company that has been on the market for a respectable number of time. It may also not be that easy to get hold of the company's history. Besides, the company's accomplishment will virtually have nothing to compare with if it has just been established recently.

The companies involved in investing in penny stocks may also be old companies that are nearing bankruptcy, which means a near bankruptcy company might probably have a poor performance record.

Most of the companies that deal with investing in penny stocks are also not required by the SEC to file and in turn are not scrutinized publicly. This means that their stocks are not regulated and represented on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq exchanges.

Now with all these information presented to you, it is now your choice whether you will get involved in penny stock investing. Just be sure that you know the risks and the gains before you give up your dollar (or two) as you invest in penny stocks.