With the broader stock market stuck in a relatively boring trading range, investors are turning to much riskier penny stocks in search of return.
Trading volume at OTC Markets, which handles companies not listed on big platforms like the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq, has jumped 40 percent in 2014 to $23.5 billion a month, according to a report in Friday's Wall Street Journal.
While that's only a fraction of the $1.3 trillion or so that gets traded each month at the NYSE, it still represents a significant change in approach for investors searching for yield and outsized returns that big indexes like the Dow industrials or S&P 500 are not providing.