24/7 Wall St.

Something odd is happening in 2016, with the “Sell in May and go away” trade not working and with stocks strong in August. The bull market is now about seven and a half years old and the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all hit new all-time highs in the week of August 12. Many investors are puzzled and are looking for other ideas about how they will make money ahead. The quest for upside and value often leads to stocks with low market caps or stocks with low share prices — frequently stocks that are trading under $10.

24/7 Wall St. reviews dozens of analyst research reports each morning. This ends up tallying up to hundreds of analyst reports each week. Our goal is to find new investing and trading ideas for our readers.

In the category of stocks to buy, it is the speculative and low-priced stocks that can come with far greater implied upside than Dow and S&P 500 stocks. Safe stocks to buy come with analyst upside targets in the range of 8% to 15% at this point in the bull market. The projected upside in speculative companies is often more than 30%, 50% or even over 100%.

Before blindly jumping in here looking for massive upside, investors need to take some caution. Not every upside target will be hit. Some serious issues can ruin the story, and sometimes analysts have assumptions that prove to be entirely wrong. And sometimes outside forces or unexpected events will wreck a company’s upside. Then are instances where management just falls short on their ability to deliver.

24/7 Wall St. frequently warns that there is no free lunch when it comes to investing. That is true for stocks, bonds, commodities and just about every other asset class. It often does 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. Sometimes companies even implode and disappear. Again, there’s no free lunch on Wall Street.

So, investors need to understand that low-priced stocks and small cap stocks generally come with larger risks. Even all that huge potential upside doesn’t change that. These are the analyst stock picks with huge upside targets in the under-$10 segment from the week of August 12.

Barclays: Not as in Sir Charles!

Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS) was raised to Outperform from Neutral at BNP Paribas on August 8. While the price target was in euros and pounds, the American depositary shares (ADSs) closed at $8.47 and have a 52-week range of $6.76 to $17.23 in New York trading. Barclays also has a U.S. consensus price target of $8.79.

Sadly, the ADSs were above $50 before the recession and financial meltdown. This year has not been kind to Barclays, as its ADSs are down about 33% so far this year.

BlackBerry: The Old RIM!

BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ: BBRY) was raised to Outperform from Market Perform at Raymond James on Friday, with a $10.50 price target. BlackBerry closed at $7.88 ahead of the call, and it has a 52-week trading range of $5.96 to $9.46.

BlackBerry shares are still lagging the market in 2016, with a year-to-date performance of −13%. Surprisingly, the shares closed up only 2.5% at $8.08 after this upgrade was made.

InvenSense: It Senses It!

InvenSense Inc. (NYSE: INVN) was raised to Overweight from Sector Weight at Pacific Crest on Friday. It was also given a $9 price target, compared with a $6.80 prior close, but InvenSense shares closed up a sharp 12.5% at $7.65 on Friday after the call. Some think of this as a Pokémon Go play now, but this is not the first week it has been noted in the analyst upgrades under $10 per share.

InvenSense has a 52-week range of $5.42 to $12.77, and now the consensus price target is $7.69. The shares are actually down 25% so far this year.

SLM: Come on Sallie!

SLM Corp. (NASDAQ: SLM) already was rated as Buy with a $9 price target at Goldman Sachs, but on August 10 news broke that SLM was added to the prized Conviction Buy list. That doesn’t exactly sound like a free-college tuition and loan-free effort of Hillary and Bernie is going to kill the company’s student loan business.

SLM closed at $7.09 ahead of the call, and it ended the week at $7.26. The stock’s 52-week range is $5.09 to $9.33, and it has a consensus price target of $9.56. SLM shares are up 11% so far in 2016.

Vivint Solar: Not All Solar Stinks

Vivint Solar Inc. (NYSE: VSLR) was raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer on August 9, but what stood out here was the firm’s $7 price target. That is going to represent over 100% upside from the $3.19 closing price from before this call was made. Vivint Solar shares rallied at high as $3.65, but then came the stupendous blunder of an earnings report from SunPower that made anything solar stink.

Vivint closed at $3.23 on Friday, almost a full circle back to where it started. The reality is that Vivint almost certainly would have fared far better had it not been for the SunPower implosion.

Harmonic: Or Tranquil

Harmonic Inc. (NASDAQ: HLIT) was raised to Buy from Hold with a $6 price target (versus a $3.37 prior close) at Drexel Hamilton. Harmonic shares closed out the week at $4.17.

The 52-week range is $2.51 to $6.31, and the consensus price target is $5.38. Harmonic shares are up only about 2.5% so far in 2016.

Oclaro: Claro Que Si!

Oclaro Inc. (NASDAQ: OCLR) was started with an Outperform rating and assigned a $9 price target (versus a $6.31 prior close) at Cowen. The stock closed out the week at $6.84, after a 10.3% gain on Friday.

The shares now have a higher 52-week range of $2.24 to $6.97. They are now up 96% so far in 2016.

Ocular: No Rift Here!

Ocular Therapeutix, Inc. (NASDAQ: OCUL) was started with an Outperform rating at JMP Securities on August 11. What stood out was a whopping $21 price target, versus a prior closing price of $5.84. The stock’s potential upside seems crazy on the surface, but the reality is that this has a 52-week range of $4.04 to $20.47.

It is also very thinly covered by analysts, and its market cap is just $168 million. The call did get some attention, as Ocular Therapeutix shares closed at $6.78 on Friday, after gaining 7.6% even the day after the upgrade.

Onconova: Bio Supernova

Onconova Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: ONTX) was started with a Buy rating at the firm Maxim Group on August 11. The firm assigned a $6 price target, which implied close to 100% upside from the prior $3.27 closing price.

Onconova ended the week at $3.61, implying that there is still some 66% in upside if Maxim’s target gets hit. Keep in mind that this is a true micro-cap here, at close to $10 million, so we were reluctant to even include it. Also, its 52-week range of $3.13 to $23.30 should prove just how volatile it can be.