Reason for stock not selling at current price

Question

I looked for duplicates but couldn't find any that matched or explained the issue.

I was just doing a test with a couple of really cheap penny stocks. They trade throughout most days and one in particular will fluctuate between .0001 and .0002. So I thought, just buy at .0001 and put a sell order in for .0002 and double my money. I tried this, and over the day or even several days the price hits .0002 multiple times but my sell order never executes.

The brokerage is Fidelity if that matters and the exchange is OTC Markets / Expert market.

Is there a known reason for this or some things I should look at for a reason?

Maybe there are just so many sell orders at .0002 that mine won't execute for a long time? Is there an easy way to see this?

The information above was from a while ago. Today it looked like this:

Volume: 6,260,064

Day range: $0.0003 - $0.0006

10/90-day avg. volume: 3M / 2M

Answer 1

Expert Market of OTC Markets is the riskiest type of penny stock/ OTC stock. According to Wikipedia, Expert Market:

includes defunct companies that have ceased operations as well as "dark" companies with questionable management and market disclosure practices. Quotations for stocks in this tier are hidden from the public. This tier was formerly known as the Pink No Information tier.

Listings on Expert Market are securities of publicly traded companies that are unwilling to provide information to investors. Any information that they do make available via OTC Markets disclosure and news service is older than six months.

There are many types of equity securities on Expert Markets: Common stock, warrants, preferred, ADRs, foreign company stock, etc. OP specified common stock. Is this stock in the Caveat Emptor category? About 30% of all common stock on Expert Markets is. Caveat Emptor category means that there is an ongoing scam, fraud investigation, or spam campaign associated with that company and/or its stock.

I checked volume ranges and prices for U.S. common stock on Expert Markets using the official OTC Markets stock screener site. Of the 1,873 listed stocks, only 14 have daily volume of 1 million shares or more. The top two highest volume stocks are tagged Caveat Emptor with daily volumes of 17,727,721 and 9,350,000. No U.S. common stock has daily volume of 6,260,064. Of the 1,873 listed stocks, only 26 had non-zero changes in price today.

These are very thinly traded stocks for which information is not generally available other than with a 6 month lag. If you have access to more current or different information that is not available from OTC Markets' Expert Markets exchange listings, we can't answer your question.

EDIT: As of September 28, 2021, amendments to Rule 15c2-11 impact Pink No Information also known as Expert Market OTC securities. The amendments restrict broker-dealers from publishing price quotes for most of them because the companies haven't made financial and company info available to regulators and investors.

I checked Fidelity: From what I can tell, they only offer OTC and pink sheet stocks for which the company is current with their financial disclosure filings.

Answer 2

Remember that "current price" just means the last price where a seller and buyer met. It does not mean anyone else agrees with that price; the next trade could be quite different. Especially on a low-volume, questionable-value stock, which you may find you can't unload at all.

The fact that it bounced a bit higher in the past is no guarantee that it will do so in the future. The fact that you bought it is no guarantee that anyone will buy it from you. Junk is junk.