It has become extremely easy and affordable for any person with a few thousand dollars to invest and trade equities within the United States stock market but there is a lot of information to understand before one can make wise decisions. Before investing your hard earned money in specific stocks, you should have a clear understanding of what stock prices are based on, how to read financial sheets, and how to view and understand history and trends.

The phrase “penny stock” tends to scare many investors away. But, those are the companies you read about that returned triple and even quadruple-digit returns.

penny stocks are usually small and newly created companies. While still trying to get established, penny stocks are analogically infants and toddlers compared to large-cap adult companies. With great parental guidance from a superb managing team, penny stocks can hold a promising future.

You hear it from talking heads on TV, financial pundits, brokers and analysts. They want you to believe that you have to buy large, expensive stocks, because it's how they make money off of you. If you choose to believe it, it will keep you at the bottom of the financial food chain for good.

This is what they want you to believe: To be a successful investor, you should buy only big-name stocks and hold onto them for years. Nothing could be further from the truth. What they really want from you is control of your money. They want you to leave it with them and forget it.

On Nov. 19, 1984, you could have picked up shares of the emerging biotechnology firm Amgen, Inc. for $3.63.

Those shares rose steadily for the next 20 years and were worth more than $85 as recent as 2005. Taking into account Amgen's five splits over the past 23 years, you can knock that original 1984 price down to about 9 cents a share.

It's almost impossible to believe that a company that would cost you pennies could turn into a $100 billion pharmaceutical giant specializing in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, anemia and psoriasis.