I can't really comment on the fast money day trade stuff, or penny stocks since that's not what I do. But I have been investing in long positions with a time horizon of 2-3 years, although most of the situations I invested in worked out in 3-6 months. Since Aug of last year I turned 3k into 7.5k for my self, and 5k into 10k for my brother after trading costs. I haven't paid taxes yet so I don't know how much that's going to cost. Mainly what I did was to look for companies that are out of favor for what ever reason, most recently and I would say currently it's oil/refining companies although it's begun to turn around, before that I did credit card companies(AmEx), before that I did REIT's, and many in between. I look at a top down approach for the sectors I think are unloved, and then do bottom up research company by company to find the company in that sector that has the best value( based on balance sheet analysis)/resources/business model etc. etc. and then I invest heavily when I find it, usually 35-40% of my capital. I'm a firm believer in concentration vs diversification.Also sometimes I just screen for undervalued companies regardless of sector, Ive found opportunities in pharm,power companies,pipeline MLP's to name a few. The reason this works is because many people want to make a quick buck and wind up trading based on fear and greed, irrational exuberance and pessimism , which leads to (sometimes) gross mispricings in the market. What I do isn't easy, because of the analysis/front end work, but if done correctly it's almost a sure thing, because you wind up buying businesses for less then they are worth, the trick is how long that worth is going to take to be reflected in the share price, which is mostly unpredictable. If you guys are interested read Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham, and Margin of Safety(out of print) by Seth Klarman, there are many other good ones, but those do the best job of clearly stating the strategy, in my opinion.