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CLEU Stock News: Inside the Latest Penny Stock Pump Disaster

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Reviewed by Ed Weinberg Fact-checked by Ellis Hobbs

If you need a real-time case study on why I teach about penny stock scams, look no further than China Liberal Education Holdings Ltd. (NASDAQ: CLEU). This was a textbook penny stock pump, the kind of setup that wipes out greedy and uninformed traders who don’t know what they’re doing.

This pattern isn’t new. This isn’t an accident. It’s the same rinse-and-repeat penny stock manipulation I’ve been exposing for 20+ years.

Yet here we are again, with traders down 97% overnight, wondering how they got scammed.

CLEU stock chart
CLEU 1-minute chart, January 30. Source: StocksToTrade.com

My heart goes out to you if you were one of the traders affected. Believe me, I’m on your side. These penny stock scammers destroy the lives of real people. It makes me absolutely sick every time I see it.

Let me break it down for you so you never fall for a disaster like this again.

How the CLEU Scam Worked

CLEU is a low-float Chinese penny stock in the education sector, supposedly focused on overseas study consulting services, smart campus solutions, and technological consulting services for smart campus solutions.

CLEU’s pump started on January 22, when this previously-illiquid Chinese stock suddenly saw over 100 million shares of volume. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars flooding into a stock that had barely traded before.

Let me repeat that: this stock was practically dead before January 22.

Then suddenly, volume exploded. The stock jumped from $4 to $8, convincing naïve traders that it was some “hot new AI play” or an “undervalued gem.”

No news. No real company fundamentals. Just a massive surge in buying.

That was your first red flag.

Then came the dump—the inevitable rug pull.

In January 30 premarket, the stock plummeted from the high $7s to the $1s, followed by a further implosion throughout the day..

97% gone.

Millions of dollars wiped out.

Retail traders left holding the bag.

If you’ve been in my Trading Challenge or watched my 7-Step Pennystocking Framework, you’d have known exactly what was coming…

Why This Scam Was Obvious

Here’s the pattern I’ve seen play out again and again…

1. Classic Penny Stock Pumping

CLEU followed the same exact playbook as countless past scams.

  • Step 1: Thinly traded penny stock.
  • Step 2: Volume magically appears.
  • Step 3: The price surges, sucking in clueless traders.
  • Step 4: The scammy insiders dump their shares, leaving retail traders in ruins.

This is not new. It’s happened hundreds of times.

2. No Legitimate News

There was no major press release or new earnings report to justify the spike.

If a stock skyrockets for no reason, it’s being manipulated. Period.

More Breaking News

3. Chinese Low-Float Stocks Are the Worst

I’ve warned about Chinese penny stocks for years.

These companies are black holes of transparency, often controlled by insiders who manipulate share prices while remaining untouchable by U.S. regulators.

They’re infamous for pumps, reverse splits, and dilution—just like CLEU.

But still, retail traders fall for it.

The CLEU Pump Aftermath: Traders Get Wiped Out

If you want to see real-time devastation, go to Reddit and X right now.

People are losing life savings—$50K, $100K, even $400K—because they got lured into this “too good to be true” setup.

WhatsApp groups and pumpers on social media promised 200–300% gains.

And then? They got destroyed.

Even worse, some people are still holding CLEU, hoping for a comeback.

News flash: It’s not coming back.

These stocks don’t recover. They get delisted or reverse split into oblivion.

If you don’t cut losses quickly, you will eventually get wiped out.

And now, as of 1 PM EST on January 31, Timothy Sykes News has verified that buying CLEU stock is no longer allowed on Schwab—but you can still buy it on E-Trade.

Let that sink in.

Some brokers have already seen the writing on the wall. Others? They’ll keep letting uninformed traders gamble their money away.

The system is rigged.

That’s why I sit in cash until I see a REAL opportunity—not some garbage manipulated penny stock.

Lessons From CLEU’s Scam

If you take nothing else from this article, remember these three lessons:

1. Never Trust Thinly Traded Penny Stocks That Suddenly Spike

100 million shares of volume doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s part of a scam.

2. Pump and Dumps Always End in Disaster

If you buy a stock that’s up 200–300% in a week, you are the exit liquidity for insiders dumping their shares.

3. Always Cut Losses Quickly

If you didn’t cut losses quickly on CLEU, you probably lost everything.

I teach my students to trade scared and protect their accounts. If a stock turns against you, get out immediately.

Final Thoughts: Will You Be the Next Penny Stock Victim?

CLEU was just another in a long line of penny stock pumps.

But the real question is: Will you know how to spot a pump next time?

Are you going to blindly buy the next “hot stock”, or are you going to learn how penny stocks actually work?

The next scam is already brewing. Will you fall for it, or will you be prepared?

Join my free webinar to learn how to spot these scams before they destroy your account.

Don’t be the next bag holder. Be the trader who profits from the pump—before the dump.


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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”