A Dubious Start

We've all gotten them. Those annoying SPAM with the !!!***HOT***!!! stock tips.

HERE WE GO AGAIN!
THE BIG ONE BEFORE THE SEPTEMBER RALLY!
THE MARKET IS ABOUT TO POP, AND SO IS EXMT!

Too often I wanted to check back a few days later to see how the stock (if it even existed) had fared. So, for months (years?) I've been infrequently curious as to this, as fewer and fewer SPAM made it past Outlook's SPAM filter, let alone the company's.

Then, I started to notice an uptick in the SPAM making it through, mostly in the form of attached PDFs. How are these stocks doing? Am I missing out on real stock tips? Could I harvest stock tips via SPAM and retire early? Then it hit me. I had just the tool sitting at my fingertips. Google Finance's Portfolio feature. I could track these SPAM there.

But how to track performance? I'd have to "buy" some of the stock to see how it performed over time. Plus, I'd noticed that some of the SPAM that came through were repeats of the same ticker symbol. To keep things simple, I decided that for every SPAM that made it into my Inbox, I would "purchase" 100 shares at the current market value. If a repeat stock tip made it in, I'd purchase 100 more shares.

My first "purchase" was June 21st for 100 shares of Score One, Inc. (SREA) at $0.60. Since then I've been averaging about 1-2 "buys" a week. As a foreshadowing as to how this portfolio is going to turn out, SREA's performance since Jun 21st has been to lose me $43.00, a -71.67% loss.

So far, I'm down 25%. So much for retiring early.