The raging bull market of the past five years has created a phenomena which is an extension of market psychology. It involves the shepherd and the sheep. You see, the shepherds are greedy, and the mutton are fearful. The shepherds believe they have some kind of special talent, that translates into smugness, and leads them into a herding initiative. The mutton are those that are green or have been burnt by a past broker or were unsuccessful with their OTC BB "investments". Its really a match made in heaven. You have shepherds that need fresh supplies of sheep to keep the profits rolling to pay the monthly Ferrari payments. The sheep need a security blanket, even if it costs them hundreds of dollars per month, to deal with the market's swings and their own cluelessness. And they are generally happy under the guru, since they are doing better than they were alone, since, as a prerequisite, the sheep have usually been sheared in previous market experiences. Thus, not losing all their money is actually an improvement over past performance.

So how do these shepherds find these sheep? Word of mouth is one way, but not really as relevant in this fast moving internet age. The party congregates in stock discussion communities, such as Silicon Investor, Raging Bull, Yahoo!, and Motley Fool. It begins innocently with the shepherds offering investment picks, but on a time-delayed basis after all the "close" friends and members get the information first. So the service that one gets on the free stock community threads is old news, all the buying/shorting has been done, additional monkeys joining on board is gravy for the gurus. A convenient way to attract more customers. Of course, you can receive that first wave of information by anteing up the site fees to join the exclusive, almight, private site. This is the guru's ultimate goal and salvation. Riskfree dollars in exchange for front running an unbridled herd willing to turn and run at a moment's notice. In exchange for shoddy, sterile research, the sheep get the comfort of feeling connected to the market's pulse, having a helping hand from a "professional" who supposedly knows what they are doing. BS technical analysis babble or funnymental research is used to support their case for the picks.