Pip-Squeak Pop

Categories: Trading

A 1970s novelty song popular around the same time as "Kung Fu Fighting." The Ramones stole the melody for "Blitzkrieg Bop."

Also, a term related to penny stocks. Penny stocks are pretty much what you might think there are. They are stocks that trade at a price so low that you can measure their worth in pennies. They don't show up on the NYSE or NASDAQ. Instead, these shares exist on the back alley exchanges of the over-the-counter market and pink sheets.

It doesn’t take much to move one of these small-time stocks by a large percentage amount. A stock trading at four cents rises to five cents. That's a 25% increase. It moved one penny, but notched a double-digit percentage advance.

A pip-squeak pop describes one of these moves. A stock with a low initial value posts a relatively small move in absolute terms (maybe just a few cents), but that price change equates to a substantial percentage gain.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a Penny Stock?0 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what is a penny stock? well in England did it be a

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farthing stock in Japan yen stock in Somalia put up your hands and give me

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your stock stock all right well what do they all have in common except maybe the

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Somalian one well their stocks that trade for an extremely low value or [Penny stocks definition appear]

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amount of money per share and not necessarily just a penny could be a dime

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or 27 pennies but very small amounts and most will define a penny stock as

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anything trading under $1 a share why well because then it's value can be [Pennies falling]

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described in terms of pennies and because it's living in the delisting red

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zone where most exchanges will simply stop trading in the stock unless the

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company does a meaningful reverse split ie where they go from 200 million shares

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trading at a buck each to having say 50 million shares out there trading at 4

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bucks each right the total value the company didn't

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change just the number of shares went down by 4x and the value went up by 4x

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right well one big element of penny stocks is the cost of trading them and [Man discussing penny stocks]

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you see this issue brilliantly illustrated by Leo in the wolf of Wall

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Street... but if you're paying 4 cents a share Commission

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to buy a share of IBM which trades for like a 150 bucks in change of

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share and those four cents are a rounding error but if you're a retail

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customer paying five cents a share Commission for a 30 cent stock well your

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commission is enormous like some 20 ish percent of the total value spend five

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grand buying grappling hooks.com and a thousand bucks of that dough goes into

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the pocket of Leo or some other bucket shop player selling you those shares

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while penny stocks may seem cheap just because they're cheap per share and if

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you believe this kind of math we have this really amazing bridge we'd love to

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sell you right here...[Bridge explodes and tumbles]

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