People like to hope they have the winning lottery ticket, instead of putting that money into savings, just like cheap stocks and I imagine it looks very alluring to new traders. This is probably due to the easy access to the market to everybody, and if you've only got a couple grand, you're going to look at something like XOM, GOOG, AAPL, etc and think "how the hell am I going to get rich buying those overpriced stocks?, but if I buy this spooz stuff that the guy on cramers forum said was going to take off....why, I could be a millionaire!" The brokers that open accounts for the smaller players are not doing them many favors imo.