Make Sure These 3 Stocks Aren't Anywhere Near Your Portfolio

We get hammered every day with loud suggestions on a stock to buy right now that could make you a gazillionaire by lunchtime tomorrow. And that comes as no surprise since we tend to put a lot of energy and time into finding the best stocks to buy.

But we don't spend enough time thinking about which stocks we should never own. Just one toxic stock is enough to wipe out the gains from your winners.

Today, I'm correcting this imbalance. I'm here to show you the three stocks to never own. In fact, they're so poisonous, I'm going to call them "Tim's Toxic Stocks."

And part of what makes these stocks profit poison is that they are some of the most popular on the market...

Why These 3 Toxic Stocks Are So Dangerous

When bad stocks become really dangerous is when they are popular enough to dupe people into buying them.

When the mighty hype machine of Wall Street gets behind a sinking company, those caught holding the bag can get hurt very badly. I have seen many times in my career what can happen when a great story with bad numbers is widely owned by individual investors.

Attila and his Huns were kinder to the Germanic tribes and Roman Legions than these stocks can be to your net worth.

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We should spend as much time on avoiding poisonous companies as we do finding great new ideas to buy, but most of us don't. The sad truth is that very few individual investors ever bother to actually review the financial statements of the companies they own. They rely on the brokers, advisors, and well-dressed slick-talking idiots on TV to do that for them. The unfortunate truth is that most of them have never read the damn things, either.

Instead, unsuspecting investors are buying stock in companies with deteriorating fundamentals. Their cash flows do not meet their expenses, so they will have to sell assets, raise debt, or sell more stock in the company to keep the lights on. Many of them have executive pay plans that make mob bosses look like paragons of kindness and restraint. They are using accounting gimmicks to cover up huge flags in the balance sheet and in the income statements.

The sad truth is that my toxic stocks are actually easy to spot if you look for them. But no one does, especially if the story is too good to pass up.

And owning these stocks is just too risky no matter how great the story may be.

They may become legitimate companies with outstanding prospects at some point in the future, but right now, the chances of them falling off the proverbial cliff is just too high to have them in your portfolio.

Fortunately for you, I do spend a lot of time reading financial statements. And I've found three duds with no business being in your portfolio, plus an entire industry I'm steering clear of...

The 3 Stocks to Never Own

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Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) is a very popular company and has been a Wall Street darling ever since it buried Blockbuster.

I also love Netflix since it is the single best way to make sure my son stays in touch. I just change the Netflix password every few weeks, and he is sure to call within a few hours.

This will no doubt be one of my more controversial toxic stock picks, but the truth is that no matter how shiny the story is, the numbers tell me that it is too risky for most to us to own.

When we dig deep, we can see Netflix's financial condition has been worsening. Reported earnings look fantastic, but the company is spending more than is coming in the door, so operating cash flow is actually getting worse. Total debt levels and interest expenses have gone up every year for the past six years as a result. So has the total number of shares outstanding as equity and option-based executive compensation plans dilute minority shareholders just a little more each year.

The stock may go up in the short term, especially if the company wins the cash-draining content war with Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), but the smart thing to do is to stand aside until the risk level has been reduced. The stock is trading at $257.54 a share, 92 times earnings and more than 60 times future earnings. Bad things happen from these levels all too frequently.

Square Inc. (NYSE: SQ) is another excellent story that makes the toxic list.

Square has done a good job of capturing some market share in small business payment markets, but it is not exactly a business with high barriers to entry. Banks will begin to fight back and regain market share, and so will other payments companies like PayPal Holdings Inc. (NYSE: PYPL). Share count and interest expense are both rising the past few years, as current cash flows are nowhere near what they need to run the business. The company is not profitable this year and fetches over 77 times the very much hoped-for 2019 earnings.

They may win the fintech wars against the world's giant banks and become the Buster Douglas story of the financial markets, but that's not the way to play it. The story is great, but the stock is just too risky for most individual investors to own right now.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is one of the greatest stock stories of my lifetime, but it has no business in a portfolio.

We get driverless electric cars and a transportation revolution with a high-tech genius at the controls. However, we also get debt levels that are rising faster than an Ivy League graduate in the State Department and a genius who just might be completely out of his mind. The total share count has gone up every year since 2011, too.

It is a great story, but the stock is too risky for anyone who is not straight-out gambling on a long shot. We will have a widely owned all-electric driverless car someday, but I think it is more likely going to be a Ford or a BMW than it is a Tesla.

Finally, I'm also avoiding an entire industry...

Avoid This Long-Shot Bet

The University of Michigan Business School kids produce a list of stocks every month that they call earnings torpedoes because they have the potential to blow up your portfolio. They have been pretty accurate over the years I have been following them. The companies on the list tend to lag the market and lose money for those silly enough to invest in these high-risk stocks.

Each and every month, the dominant industry on the list is the biotech companies. Specifically, clinical-stage biotech companies with hopes, dreams, and ideas but no real product to sell. They burn cash like crazy, and the odds of one of them actually hitting the big time with a wildly successful drug are pretty similar to those of the Baltimore Orioles winning the 2019 World Series. Currently, that's about 350 to 1, according to the Vegas sports books.

I used to think that the experts with degrees in pharmacology and chemistry could pick the winners in clinical-stage biotechs, but I recently had a friend who has worked in both fields tell me that even they have a difficult time picking which little drug companies' idea will turn into a profitable product. There is just too big an element of luck in the process of navigating the swamps of the FDA approval process for even the experts to know. Those of us not in the know should probably never own one of these little-potential and (usually) toxic speculations.

Some of these toxic stocks could defy their financial conditional and go up in price. Some could get better and maybe even trade at a bargain level that makes the company an attractive investment. However, much like a parlay of the Miami Marlins playing the Orioles in the World Series next year, it is not a smart bet for most of us.

Instead of looking for good stories or popular stocks, I'll show you exactly how to pinpoint stocks with winning potential.

My strategy eliminates stock losses and allows me to close out positions with 300%, 500%, even 787% upside.

It's also how I've been able to close out 32 winners in a row without a single realized loss.

Find out more right here...

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About the Author

Tim Melvin is an unlikely investment expert by any measure. Raised in the "projects" of Baltimore by a single mother, he never attended college and started out as a door-to-door vacuum salesman. But he knew the real money was in the stock market, so he set sights on investing - and by sheer force of determination, he eventually became a financial advisor to millionaires. Today, after 30 years of managing money for some of the wealthiest people in the world, he draws on his experience to help investors find "unreasonably good" bargain stocks, multiply profits, and build their nest eggs. Tim tirelessly works to find overlooked "hidden gems" in the stock market, drawing on the research of legendary investors like Benjamin Graham, Walter Schloss, and Marty Whitman. He has written and lectured extensively on the markets, with work appearing on Benzinga, Real Money, Daily Speculations, and more. He has published several books in the "Little Book of" Investment Series and a "Junior Chamber Course" geared towards young adults that teaches Graham's principles and techniques to a new generation of investors. Today, he serves as the Special Situations Strategist at Money Morning and the editor of Peak Yield Investor.

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