Cowboy Marketing

You probably get a lot of sales emails hitting you between the eyes every single day. And it's, uh...usually a good idea to reply to legitimate emails that offer you a chance to obtain a world-class financial education for an affordable price. But you want to stay away from anyone trying to sell you a stock via email.

There’s a practice dating back to the history of cold-calling on stock sales that is extremely unethical. It’s called “Cowboy Marketing.”

No one's trying to sell cattle in this situation. Not unless it's by email.

The unethical play here is that a company with a tradable stock doesn't know that someone has been sending spam messages around to promote the equity. Usually, people would create an opt-in campaign to market a security. This has been a popular way to engage in a pump-and-dump scheme in the past. However, governments have taken notice of these efforts, and have regulated marketing with anti-spam laws in recent decades.