People love stock picks, especially when the stocks are low priced. So, here are five actively traded low priced stocks I’m calling my “unpicks”. There are plenty of stock picks out there and 99% of them are crap so I’m going taking the opposite side here, saying avoid these stocks completely. In my experience, staying on the sidelines and avoiding certain stocks has helped me earn above average returns.
Ford (NYSE: F
), $7.70, my #1 stock unpick right now. We all know this company—I mean how can we not, considering there’s about a dozen articles written about it every day. I could spend my entire life analyzing all this news and still have no idea where the stock is going because the chart looks completely random and there’s too many people playing it from all different angles. Avoid.

Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT), $3.19 is a guessing game here. The stock got crushed last month with a horrible quarter and now everyone is trying to guess whether management can pick up the pieces. Whether long or short, there’s a ton of smart people on both sides of the fence—I won’t pretend to say which side is right. Avoid.

E*Trade Financial (Nasdaq: ETFC), $5.44 is the biggest guessing game in the US stock market right now. Sure, it’s gonna bounce and dip, but there’s literally no way to be able to have any kind of edge either way. Same principles apply here—too many opposing viewpoints, too much trading volume and too much news coming out every day. Avoid.

RF Microdevices (Nasdaq: RFMD), $6.16 has tried to spike off the low $6 range for the past six months, but it just can’t seem to hold its gains. Judging by the price action, I’d say short it, but earnings estimates are rising and the stock is somewhat cheap here. Avoid.

Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL), $6.38, is trying to use the popularity of Linux to boost sales, but their stock has gotten crushed lately. I normally like to buy into such panic selling, but this same kind of action happened just two months ago, which used up a lot of the dip buyers. No edge possible here—avoid.

SEC General Warning: Sykes has no positions in any of these stocks, but reading this commentary may be dangerous to your investment health.
















