Summer is history and we have entered the fourth quarter. The week of October 7 ended with the Dow down just 68 points at 18,240.49 despite a volatile week. Despite high valuations, a return of volatility, the election coming, the Federal Reserve wanting to hike rates and weaker than expected economic data, investors just keep proving that they want to buy stocks.
The bull market is now about seven and a half years old. The Dow and S&P 500 are still fairly close to all-time highs. This has left many investors perplexed, and now they are looking for other ideas for how they will still make money ahead.
24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning of the week. This ends up being hundreds of analyst reports each week. Our goal is to find new investing ideas and trading ideas for our readers.
The quest for upside and value in new ideas often ends up being stocks with low market caps or with low share prices. It ends up being stocks that are trading for less than $10 a share. In the week of October 7, there were multiple analyst calls for stocks to buy that were trading under $10 per share.
Investors need to understand that speculative and low-priced stocks often come with far greater implied upside than Dow and S&P 500 stocks. Safer stocks to buy come with analyst upside targets in the range of 8% to 15% at this point in the bull market. So, what does it tell you when analysts see 40%, 100% or exponential upside projections? If the answer is not “more risk,” then you need to pursue more investing education before investing.
It is almost a certainty that not every one of these upside targets will be achieved. Sadly, it doesn’t even take all that bad of news or that much of a market correction to wreck an upside story. Sometimes analysts are just wrong, or outside forces or unexpected events can wreck the upside. Sometimes a market correction will wreck a company’s upside. And sometimes management just falls short on its ability to deliver.
24/7 Wall St. frequently warns its readers that there is no free lunch when it comes to money matters and investing. That is true for stocks, bonds, commodities and every other asset class. It may not seem fair when it happens, but you can make projections that come true and then the market simply refuses to value it with the same upside.
A final risk and warning label here should be that some companies implode or disappear entirely. All the projected upside from analysts in the world will look pretty silly in retrospect if the market sells off very much or if these companies run into hurdles.
These are the analyst stock picks with huge upside targets in the under-$10 category from the week of October 7.
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: BRCD) was started as Buy with a $12 price target at D.A. Davidson on October 4. The stock closed at $9.26 per share on Friday. It has a consensus analyst price target of $10.21 and a 52-week trading range of $7.40 to $10.92. D.A. Davidson said that the recent purchase of Ruckus is helping against its competitors and the firm sees multiple growth engines bringing upside to revenues and earnings in the coming years.
Fortress Biotech Inc. (NASDAQ: FBIO) was started with a Buy rating and was given a $9 price target at Roth Capital on October 3. What should stand out here, despite having a mere $144 million market cap then, is that this analyst call predicts over 200% upside from the prior $2.97 closing price. What should also stand out is that the call was ignored entirely, because shares closed at $2.79 on Friday. The 52-week range is $2.10 to $4.66.
Immunomedics Inc. (NASDAQ: IMMU) was assumed as Buy at Jefferies, and the prior price target of $5.00 is now $5.50 (versus a $3.28 prior close). Jefferies even assigned a 55% probability of accelerated approval based on Phase 2 data in 2018. Jefferies noted that IMMU-132 has generated promising results in triple negative breast cancer. The analyst sees progress in 2016 setting the stage for a deal in the coming months ahead of the Phase 3 start by late 2016 or early 2017.
Oclaro Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) was started as Buy with an $11.25 price target at Jefferies on October 3. This represents upside of some 31% if the firm is right, and that target was $1.50 higher than the consensus target price of $9.75 at that time. Jefferies thinks Oclaro likely will benefit from strong demand over the next couple of years driven by multiple secular drivers around data center growth and build-outs in the United States and China. Oclaro closed out the week at $8.99, and it has a 52-week range of $2.37 to $9.34.
Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (NYSE: PBR) was reiterated as Overweight at Morgan Stanley on October 6. While Petrobras closed out the week at $10.53, the closing price was $9.93 before the call was made. Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $13 from $10, looking for more asset sales and better conditions for the state-run oil giant. Petrobras now has a 52-week range of $2.71 to $10.61, but its consensus price target is lower at $9.59.
Other key analyst calls in stocks under $10 for the week ending October 7, 2016 were as follows:
Catalyst Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: CPRX) was raised to Overweight from Neutral and the price target was raised to $4 from $1 (versus a $1.12 close) at Piper Jaffray.
Cytosorbents Corp. (NASDAQ: CTSO) was reiterated as Buy at Brean Capital on October 4, and its price target of $24 was more than 250% implied upside based on the prior close of $6.73. Just keep in mind that the call was largely ignored, because shares closed at $5.58 on Friday. This is based on 10 times the company’s projected 2019 EBITDA, so it has quite some time for things to develop (for better or worse) before the upside or known outcome pans out.
Neuralstem Inc. (NASDAQ: CUR) was reiterated as with a Buy rating and a price target of $4 at Brean Capital. Normally we might skip this one but the target price is effectively calling for a very rare 10-bagger return, if it turns out to be right. It is also at the very early stages, and Brean sees its $4 target based on five times the projected 2022 EBITDA. The stock closed at $0.32 on Friday, in a 52-week range of $0.19 to $1.35. If you want a more conservative target, Roth Capital has a Buy rating and a $1.20 price target.
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