Nope not the same... Big Boards are real companies. 99.8% of all Pennies are POS frauds trying to bilk the unaware out of their money. Never believe anything you hear about a penny stock. Never. It is all meant to disgorge you of your money. Have you heard of P&D scams? Pump and Dumps. A group of people will buy a bunch of stock at a low price, come to message boards or send out PR's with claims of outstanding profits to be made, deals in the works, the Short squeeze on, its all just around the corner, in order to create a run up in the PPS of a stock. They'll point to fundamentals, or charts, or the integrity of the company's owners and say anything to get people to buy the stock. When the stock is on the way up, the original group of people or person will be selling the holdings while continuing to tout the outstanding quality of the stock, basically in an effort to steal your money, leaving you holding the bag when it turns out that the company doesn't have anything of value to offer. The stock will retreat to former levels and you have a worthless piece of paper to call your own. It is insidious, but people will do everything in the penny stocks to take your money. Count on it.