Making money from the stupid

[BoredBloke]

Aww and I thought these were all real investment opportunities. Well there goes the pension.

[VectraMan]

It's been done better...

http://www.national-lottery.co.uk

[Ardesco]

In that case you could theoretically make some cash if you bought the second the e-mails started and then sold a day or so later yourself...

Not for the faint hearted though and you would also have to assume you were in the first mailing batch

[_V_]

did not realise there was so much cash to be made from the foolish

Took a while for Gay Gordon to twig the same with IR35.

[ferret]

I did wonder why i was getting so many of these stock alerts - did not realise there was so much cash to be made from the foolish!

[_V_]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5284618.stm

Spam messages that tout stocks and shares can have real effects on the markets, a study suggests.
E-mails typically promote penny shares in the hope of convincing people to buy into a company to raise its price.

People who respond to the "pump and dump" scam can lose 8% of their investment in two days.

Conversely, the spammers who buy low-priced stock before sending the e-mails, typically see a return of between 4.9% and 6% when they sell.

The study recently published on the Social Science Research Network say their conclusions prove the hypothesis that spammers "buy low and spam high".