Never get your stock picks from the internet

CNN/Money's Andy Serwer makes an expensive mistake...for his lemmings:

SILVER: You got the silver? (Jagger/Richards, off "Let It Bleed.") You know I'm big on this stuff now. Unlike gold, silver has many industrial uses. Demand is very strong now. (Is it a coincidence that the Canadian dollar - Canada is a big silver producer - hit 90 cents for the first time since June 1978?) And remember I told you that a silver ETF was due? Well, it's here. Came out in late April, and it (Research) soared, up from $128 to $144. Or how about Western Silver (Research), up from $7 to $29 this year? Or Silver Wheaton (Research) or Standard Silver (Research)? No, it's not too late. Buy 'em by the bag!

Here's a guy who is "big on this stuff now" (i.e. *after* it's had a monster run and is due for a pullback, maybe a hugely painful one) and that may be *a* mistake, but it's not *the* mistake.

If you click on the research link for Standard Silver above you'll get nothing, and there's a reason for that. If you click on the name, you'll get a quote for a little pink sheet (over the counter) stock having the day of its life. I used to trade Standard Silver back when it was (honest to God) available for 2 cents. There's no info available on the company at all. No one knows what it owns, what it does, even if it still exists (the last good address for the company was in 2000). No one should own this stock.

So why is a CNN money columnist pimping Standard Silver? He didn't mean to. He meant to say Silver Standard, which is one of the finest silver companies in the world and a huge beneficiary of high silver prices. But he (or some editor) made a mistake and the wrong company got linked by accident.

Now that company is trading at twice its old high and on more volume than it's had in 5 years, and a number of investors who bought something they didn't understand just because they saw it mentioned in the news are paying top dollar for a big stocking full of warm horse manure. Someday they'll sell it back to me at 2 cents again and forever swear off mining stocks. Serves 'em right.

A fool and his money are soon parted, and the internet makes that process efficient indeed.