Actually, I was referring to what sounded like "SI started out being focused on OTCBB, too."
But regarding the point you raise, you're preaching to the choir. Not only is fraud present in some big-cap companies themselves, it's nothing short of rampant in the whole "analyst" game.
Someone else was saying earlier that it's easier in the OTCBB arena and were presented with the whole big-cap analyst game as a retort, which, though true, doesn't really refute the original comment about it being easier in OTCBB. To profitably manipulate big-caps, you have to somehow gain credibility with the people with the deep pockets. To profitably manipulate OTCBB, you only need to gain credibility with a few hundred people who don't have to have deep pockets. No experience, education, or spelling skills necessary.
I guess the OTCBB fraud game has a lower cost of admission. Which, I guess might seem fair since I'd further guess that far less money is stolen from people in the OTCBB arena than in the big-cap analyst game.
So both people were right. One was just offering a rebuttal that didn't rebut.
Getting back to the "big caps are fraud, too" idea, I've long been bothered by what I see as a far more insidious problem. That the whole market is standing on the wobbly toothpicks of a widely accepted notion of what stocks should be "worth". Why on earth are they not all priced only based on dividends or expected earnings? Isn't that really all that any company is "worth"?
As I became aware of this, I started buying companies for my LTB&H position based primarily on dividends. F and UCU are my current "hold 'em forever" positions. But, heck, even that isn't safe. No sooner did I buy Ford, than the dividend got cut in half, so now I'd have to hold it about 35 years before the accumulated dividends would make the stock "free". At least in UCU's case, it's more like 19 years.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that OTCBB fraud is easier to perpetrate, big-cap fraud takes more money from more people, the whole "analyst" game takes even more, and the market itself is largely based on a notion (that a company is "worth" something if it has earnings, whether or not it pays dividends) that would seem doomed for failure.
