That holds true for a lot, more so in day trading than long term though. Long term with a start up absolutely must be based on your educated best guess, or speculation, of where the prospect will be in the medium to long range future. That should be very different than where the start up is now. The educated part comes from your ability to collect and get facts straight, not twisted and incorrectly repeated (thanks for your clarification on the OTCBB, by the way) and assemble all of those facts in your mind or in digital or hard copy if needed, so as to enable you to create a probability for a company's success.