According to a TRACE (Threat Research and Content Engineering) Report released last December, stock spam is on the decline.

Stock ‘pump n dump’ spam declined to an almost insignificant 1% of spam after its peak of nearly 50% in February 2007.

Stock spam, which touts penny stocks in order for the spammers to make a financial gain, has been subject to the biggest change during the year. The July-December 2007 period saw stock spam dwindle to almost nothing. By year-end it represented less than 1% of all spam - a major turnaround when compared to its peak of nearly 50% in February 2007. We cannot say precisely why stock spam has declined in this way; however, likely reasons include:

• Overuse of stock spam leading to declining returns to spammers
• Interruption of stock spammers operations from the actions of securities regulators and law enforcement authorities

Stock spam has no need for URLs because it merely touts the advantages of a particular stock...

Stock spam emails run a pump and dump scam similar to the scam that was featured in the movie "Boiler room". In the movie the "traders" would ring would-be investors to buy into a worthless penny stock - artificially inflating the value of shell companies. That's the "pumping" stage of this stock trading scam. Next is the "dump". Once the prices have been artificially raised to the satisfaction of the scammers, they would simply sell off or "dump" their shares.