Top Tax Selling Stocks: Bargains for a Possible Bounce in January

by Fred Fuld III

You may be wondering what a tax selling stock is. It is a stock that is currently selling for a low price but was trading at much higher levels earlier in the year.

As the year-end approaches, many investors employ the technique called tax harvesting , which is the selling of loser stocks to offset any gains that may have been established during the year.

With all the heavy selling, the price of the stocks that have had big drops tends to tank far more than what would normally take place during the rest of the year.

So traders and investors are on the lookout for stocks that are heavily hit, hoping for a little (or big) bounce in January, once the tax selling is over.

So if you are looking for these types of stocks, here is a selection of some that have dropped by over 75% year-to-date. They all have low market capitalizations so they should be considered speculative, as the market caps are all less than $800 million. However, all of these have a price to earnings ratio of less than 12 and all have a price sales ratio less than one.

Company Symbol Market Cap P/E Price
Francesca’s Holdings Corp. FRAN 45.86M 11.81 1.04
Ferroglobe PLC GSM 334.56M 4.15 1.81
Iconix Brand Group, Inc. ICON 9.41M 0.29 0.12
MiMedx Group, Inc. MDXG 190.98M 5.53 1.55
OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. OMED 31.76M 6.08 0.81
United Natural Foods, Inc. UNFI 788.58M 4.09 11.09
Ultra Petroleum Corp. UPL 189.41M 1.36 0.92

If the above stocks are too speculative for you, here are some stocks that are down over 50% year-to-date and have market caps in excess of $2 billion. They all have P/E ratios less than 14, and a price sales ratio of less than one.

Company Symbol Market Cap P/E Price
CommScope Holding Company, Inc. COMM 3.39B 13.91 16.89
Mohawk Industries, Inc. MHK 8.96B 9.65 117.02
Owens Corning OC 4.83B 10.78 43.44
Spectrum Brands Holdings, Inc. SPB 2.43B 4.66 45.81
Thor Industries, Inc. THO 2.79B 6.25 54.04

Maybe someone’s tax losses can be your tax stock gains.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Second Week of October

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called ‘Buying Dividends,’ also commonly referred to as ‘Dividend Capture.’ This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend.

This technique generally works only in bull markets, and can work in flat or choppy markets, but you need to avoid the technique during bear markets. In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can’t sell the stock until after the ex date.

The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend in the near future. The list contains many dividend paying companies, lots with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the ex-dividend date, the quarterly dividend amount, and annual yield.

Oracle Corporation (ORCL) 10/10/2017 0.19 1.39%
Abbott Laboratories (ABT) 10/12/2017 0.265 1.92%
Foot Locker, Inc. (FL) 10/12/2017 0.31 3.40%
Owens Corning Inc (OC) 10/13/2017 0.2 1.00%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found here at wstnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn’t show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out some of the other high yield stock lists at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WStNN.com. Most of the lists are free.

Dividend definitions: Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.

Monthly Dividend Stock List

Record date: the day when you must be on the company’s books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks at two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Don’t forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.