Sucker Stocks: Avoid These Dogs At All Costs

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- In recent weeks, I have written about several stocks that turn up in your portfolio after the proverbial weekend in Las Vegas.

Like the looker at the end of the bar who forces herself into the elevator as you head back to your hotel room, it's difficult to resist the allure of the low-priced stock. Message board posters and financial writers touting the latest stocks set to double or triple trigger man's primal urge for excitement.

More often than not, they're low-priced numbers that, to your early-morning fright, look ugly with the lights on and the buzz worn off. Stocks such as Sirius XM (SIRI) and Frontier Communications (FTR).

Take Sirius XM, for example. Newsflash. I refuse to type in capital letters, but if there ever was an appropriate time, it would be now. There is no future in satellite radio.

There's a reason why Clear Channel dropped radio from its name, bills itself as an entertainment company and promotes the living snot out of its iHeart Radio app on its terrestrial radio stations.

Its CEO, Bob Pittman, the man who founded MTV, realizes there's no future in terrestrial radio so wholesale rebranding became necessary. He also understands that to find a buyer for Clear Channel -- and it save it from its mountain of debt -- he needs to make the company look attractive, innovative and progressive.

At Sirius XM, CEO Mel Karmazin should slap lipstick on his pig, put shareholders out of their misery and take any price Liberty Media (LMCA) or any other company is willing to offer. Instead, he wastes precious time producing the same old tired programming over the same old antiquated delivery system while he massages his ego in a pointless battle for control.

Despite the almost-obvious reality that Karmazin is playing chicken with their money by not simply ceding control to Liberty, tortured SIRI shareholders not only stay long, they continue to pump the stock. As this thing dumps to below a dollar -- and Mel goes out in a blaze of incompetence -- SIRI must remain number one on any list of sucker stocks to sell immediately.

Less-obvious examples exist, however. I am on record -- the worst has passed Netflix (NFLX) by. I noted this at the beginning of June in Netflix Can Rise From The Dead, But Is It a Buy?

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