I'll say one thing to watch out for is OTC stocks (OTCBB or Pinksheets). I'm still pretty much in your same boat, I can say stay away from them and any other really low volume stocks--usually bigboard stocks have enough volume though. Be patient but *lock in your gains* when reasonable.
OTC stocks can give you some wonderful gains but they often come in waves of volume followed by extreme atrophy... typically you buy during a period of heavy volume (that's when they move and when we typically trigger a buy) but it could be weeks, even months before volume picks up again and the PPS could drift below your cost-basis under low volume (so it's difficult to sell or stop-out) if you get in too late. Can't tell you how many crummy situations I've encountered with OTC stocks like that. Those scenarios are OK when you're sitting on $50K+ and can let $3-5K of it sit around for months without much trouble waiting for a huge payoff, since you have plenty of scratch to continue your compounded gains elsewhere.
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