The Peter Leeds Penny Stocks Project

by Roland Hulme

The Exchange Coffee House was created in tribute of the 18th Century coffee houses of colonial America - where politics, business and finance were discussed and rowdily debated (most commonly over ale, rather than coffee.) So far, we've dedicated a lot of space towards political discussion - but none to financial matters. Today that changes, with the launch of the most ambitious project the Exchange Coffee House has ever embarked on: The Peter Leeds project.

Is Peter Leeds a scam, or the real deal?

For those of you who don't know who he is, Peter Leeds is touted at "the Penny Stock professional", author of Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading and owner of PennyStocks.net; where he offers a subscription service promoting listed stocks that are trading for under $5.

Peter Leeds is wildly successful in this role - with over 30,000 subscribers to his website and a litany of media appearances under his belt, including regular spots on NBC, Fox News and CBS.

Perhaps most famously, he was invited by the American Stock Exchange to be a guest speaker; establishing him as a legitimate figure in the sometimes shady arena of penny stocks.


But as Jim Kramer, of Mad Money, is ample proof of - television appearances don't mean you know what you're talking about; nor that investors should listen to the advice you give.

Which led me to ask the question: Is the financial advice Peter Leeds gives any good?

To that end, I bought and read his book, Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading. It's a quick read that gives the fledgling investor some great insight into the mechanics of trading stocks; and contains some very important advice.

Perhaps most importantly, he outlines that the "penny stocks" he recommends and trades are always listed stocks from the NASDAQ, AMEX or New York Stock Exchange.  He warns investors to stay well clear of anything sold on the OTCBB or Pink Sheets; as he feels the majority of those are penny stock scams (and if my experience trading is any indication, he's absolutely right.)

But I agreed with the most common criticism of his book - that Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading reads like an advertisement for his penny stocks subscription service. Throughout the book, it tells you what you should be looking for in a potential stock purchase, but he doesn't give you the information most of us need to find such stocks. The answer, it is heavily implied, is to be found by investing in his subscription service.

Now this is where Peter Leeds becomes a victim of his own success. Running Google searches for Peter Leeds Review or Penny Stocks Review or even Peter Leeds Scam invariably drives one back to his ubiquitous website, Pennystocks.com, which means it's impossible to get an impartial, independent evaluation of whether the service he offers is worth the money or not.

Instead, you're always driven to his website; where you're given the dog and pony show about why you should sign up.

Aside from that, you're directed for forums where investors weigh in with a heavy-handed: "Never subscribe for stock picks" which might well be good advice; but since they're not enrolled with Peter Leeds they're not really qualified to say.

Hence the creation of the Peter Leeds Project on the Exchange Coffee House - a totally impartial, fair and balanced evaluation of the Peter Leeds Penny Stocks subscription service that will give people the information they're looking for; namely whether it's any good or not.

To this end, I will be subscribing to Peter Leed's penny stocks program and investing in some of the stock picks he makes. I will report here what my verdict of the service - and the stock picks - ultimately is.

Before I begin, though, I need to make some things very clear:

• I am not involved, affiliated, partnered or endorsed in any way by Peter Leeds or pennystocks.com. This is an entirely independent, impartial review of the service - and the verdict I render will be absolutely honest.
• I have purchased Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading with my own money. I will subscribe to Peter Leeds penny stocks service with my own money. Any investment I make in stock Peter Leeds recommends will be with my own money (and in a very limited capacity.) 

Hopefully that establishes that I have no vested or financial interest in being anything other than scrupulously honest about Peter Leed's subscription program.

I will admit that I am hoping his program is legitimate, because then I will be able to make money off his recommendations. However, if it is not I will report so here.

In the interest of professionalism, I will be abiding to the followings rules while operating the Peter Leeds project:

• Peter Leeds makes his living by recommending stocks to paying subscribers. Therefore I will not be "giving away" his product by listing his recommendations here.
• Neither will I print specific stock prices or information that will enable them to be identified. I will refer to stocks only by the date on which he recommended them, and round up to within one or two percentage points how much they climb or sink.

Finally, I will answer the one question I've been asked ever since I envisioned the Peter Leeds project - "what's in it for me?"

The answer, my friends, is very simple: If the Peter Leeds Penny Stocks program is actually legitimate, I intend to make money by investing in his recommendations. If the program is not legitimate, I intend to let people know - and that this verdict was reached objectively and independently.

Why would I risk my own money by buying a subscription to his service - and possibly investing in his recommendations? Easy - I will see that money again.

The Exchange Coffee House sells advertising - and the traffic I anticipate getting by way of launching the Peter Leeds project should cover the costs of subscribing to the program at the very least. My intention is to ensure that I am not out of pocket no matter whether Peter Leed's penny stocks program turns out to be legitimate, or just what the people Googling Peter Leeds scam feared it would be.

Watch this space. The first update is coming soon.

A Reality Check for SOPA Opponents

by Roland Hulme

Today, sites like Wikipedia will be blacked out in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA.) 

I copied and pasted this picture without attribution.

This poorly written bill will give copyright holders the opportunity to sue websites that post copyrighted material - even if it's uploaded by users, and not the website owners themselves.

In addition, it can force search engines like Google to block links to sites that host copyrighted material overseas.

At its worst, the bill could even see kids who upload videos to YouTube of them singing cover versions of copyrighted songs face prosecution.

Nobody is going to argue that SOPA is a badly worded, draconian act - but let's just stop before we all jump on the "Bill Bad!" bandwagon.

SOPA may be a bad bill, but it exists for a legitimate reason. The Internet has made it ridiculously easy to steal, share, disseminate and distribute copyrighted material and the it's killing those of us who attempt to make a living by creating things.

I found this out first hand when I started to discover articles, blogs and columns I'd written appear in other places - copied and pasted and passed off as other people's work.

At a magazine I helped start, my colleagues found this out when pictures from their magazine (which was only available in printed format) started appearing on people's Tumblr feeds without prior approval.

Right now, thousands of people illegally download songs, music and video games through bittorrent and other peer-to-peer sharing services without giving thought to the fact that they are basically stealing them.

"Tube" sites give users the opportunity to upload entire episodes of TV shows, or complete films, that people can then watch without paying for a cable bill, DVD rental or download. Yes, it's forbidden - and the hosting site will eventually remove it when they discover it - but it goes on with such frequency that it's essentially impossible to police.

And the problem is, this all slowly erodes the ability for creative people to make a living through what they create. Artists expend time, money and effort to create something that others want to enjoy - and some of those people enjoy it so much that they pass it onto their friends for free; robbing the artists of the revenue they need to keep making what they make.

Even worse, the nature of the Internet has made piracy so ubiquitous that most people don't even think they're doing anything wrong. That's the real issue I have with opponents of SOPA. Too many of them don't seem to get the fact that you can't just take other people's stuff and do with it what you will.

And the Internet's to blame in other ways, as well. Just take Tumblr, for example. I have a particular issue with that website because it's essentially streamlined the theft and dissemination of copyrighted material.

People see pictures, videos or words that they like and can distribute them to thousands of people with just the click of a mouse button; often without attribution and almost always without payment.

And, even worse, they then pat themselves on the back for their creativity in doing so.

There are people who think that by creating a Tumblr page and copying and pasting other people's stuff onto it they're somehow "creating" something of their own. They're not. They're just parasites feeding off the creativity and originality of others.

Don't get me wrong - I've been as bad as the rest of them. I used to run a wildly successful blog called Renaissance Babes, which received hundreds or occasionally thousands of hits a day. All I did  was copy and paste other people's photos of girls in renaissance faire outfits.

I thought I was incredibly clever and important doing this; until other people started doing the same thing with photos from the magazine I wrote for - and I realized that what I was doing was essentially just stealing other people's stuff.

So I get it. People don't like SOPA. But if you really want to end the need for a Stop Online Piracy Act, it will take more than blacking out Google and Facebook for a day. You need to start here:

• Don't illegally download music
• Don't illegally download movies
• Don't illegally download software
• Don't copy your software DVDs and give them to your friends
• Don't copy and paste photos from other people's websites and post them on your own
• Don't copy and paste newspaper articles or blogs and post them without attribution

Essentially, it all boils down to this: If you don't want the movie studios, the record companies and the software execs to force restrictive legislation down your throats - don't steal their stuff.

We are as much to blame for the existence of SOPA and other anti-piracy bills as they are. It's about time we took ownership of that and adjusted our behavior in response.

Only Ron Paul can win the election for the Republicans

by Roland Hulme

The Republicans will lose the 2012 Presidential Election - unless they nominate Ron Paul.

Love him or hate him, only R. Paul can win.

Winning a presidential election is easy. You just need to win more votes in more states than your opponent.

For the GOP, a roadmap to victory is already in place. All they need to do is identify who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and try to draw those voters towards a Republican candidate.

A swing of just a few percentage points could make all the difference in November.

But despite the simplicity and transparancy of this formula, it seems the Republicans are eager to throw their chances of election victory away in 2012.

In Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, primary season has heated up; and it seems clear that the Republican old guard have already decided who their 2012 candidate will be regardless of what the Republican voters actually say.

They've decided to root for Mitt Romney; and in doing so have lost the election even before it begins.

Mitt Romney cannot stand convincingly against Barack Obama.

He cannot appeal to the grass roots movements like the Tea Party and the Occupy movement because he comes from such a privileged background and is so entrenched in the corrupt system Americans are losing patience with.

He cannot credibly argue for the repeal of the lauded "Obamacare" health care reform because it was modeled on a system he himself introduced while governor of Massachusetts.  

He cannot tout himself as a champion of cutting taxes, when he has a record for raising taxes by $300 million as governor; mostly through slyly redefining fees and tariffs.

Mitt Romney's campaign is dead in the water before it even begins.

The truth be told, every other potential Republican candidate faces the same issue. They might talk tough, but not one of them has the credentials to put together a serious campaign against Barack Obama - with one notable exception.

Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is the only candidate who could beat Barack Obama; and he could do it by a landslide.

Why? Because he's the only candidate who will draw Democratic and Independent voters away from Barack Obama and make them tick the GOP box on election day.

There's proof. Astonishing proof. The fact that Ron Paul placed 2nd in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire; with almost 20% of the vote.

Just in case you missed the significance of that statement, it means Ron Paul came in second place in both the Republican and Democratic primaries in the state.

The GOP elite and the mainstream media have tried every trick in the book to squish news of Ron Paul's powerful support - with CNN even claiming that Jon Huntsman was the "real" 2nd place victor in New Hampshire "once you took Ron Paul out of it."

But the fact is you can't "take Ron Paul out of it." That's not how democracy works.

From a personal perspective, I'm not even sure I'm that much of a fan of Ron Paul and his policies! But I do know that only he has the ammunition to bring 2012 home for the Republicans - and it seems they're terrified of acknowledging that fact.

Look at it this way - if Ron Paul won the Republican primary, most - if not all - Republicans would support him in preference to Barack Obama.

Then, if the New Hampshire democratic primary was even remotely representative of America as a whole (and even with a 75% margin of error in either direction) enough Democrats and Independents would support him to easily bring home victory.

Whether that would be a good thing or not remains to be seen - one of the reasons the Republican old guard are so terrified of Ron Paul is precisely why he's so popular with voters on both sides of the political spectrum - he's a threat to the status quo.

But that's the price victory comes at - which is precisely why the Republicans will do everything they can to ensure Ron Paul doesn't win the GOP primary - even if it costs them the election.

And that's important.

Registered Republicans need to understand that mindset. In years to come, and in future presidential elections, we all need to remember than when Republicans had the means to achieve almost certain victory, they threw it away.

Instead, they'll run mainstream muppet Mitt Romney. They'll run him on a campaign of "vote for Mitt, because he's not Obama." And they'll lose, just like the Democrats did in 2004 when they ran John Kerry under the campaign: "Vote for Kerry, because he's not Bush."

In 2004, I supported the reelection of George W. Bush for precisely that reason - and it's why I'll vote for Barack Obama in 2012 rather than swallow the bitter-tasting poison that the Republican party elite is trying to spoon-feed their core electorate.

"Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time."

Sun Tzu, the Art of War