I’d like to share with you a list that was shown to me by our colleagues over at Profitable Trading. 

It’s a list of 15 of the most widely owned stocks in the market. I’m sure you’ve heard of some of these companies, and it’s very possible you even own a few.

#-ad_banner-#Yet Tom Vician, Certified Market Technician and Chief Investment Strategist of Alpha Trader, says that despite being featured prominently in the media and being held by some of the world’s top investment gurus, he wouldn’t touch any of them with a 10-foot pole.

For example, one of these stocks is a casino and resort operator. Hedge fund titan Mason Hawkins owns 12.1 million shares, yet it has collapsed 40% over the past six months.

Another is a popular retailer that’s down 41% in the past six months. And Tom says it has basically been “dead in the water” for the past two years.

But that’s not even the half of it. Tom says, based on their Alpha Scores, these stocks are likely to lag the market — or worse — over the coming weeks and months. 

Simply put, they’re not stocks you’d want to have your money in right now.

Now, unfortunately I’m not able to reveal all 15 stocks to you today. The full list is reserved exclusively for Alpha Trader subscribers. To gain access to the rest of the names on the list you can click here.

Although the companies in this list are very different from one another, Tom says they all have two things in common. Each of the stocks is in the bottom 30th percentile for the two crucial components that make up Profitable Trading’s Alpha Trader system. And this has resulted in some of the lowest Alpha Scores he’s ever seen. While every stock he recommends in Alpha Trader must have a score above 140 (on a scale of 0 to 200), the scores for these popular stocks range from 14 to 66.

But here’s what’s really troubling… While these big-name stocks are flashing low Alpha Scores, their popularity keeps investors from looking for greener pastures. 

And just by taking a cursory look at some of their charts, it’s costing investors a ton of money…

Compare this to the price chart for Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), a current holding in Tom’s Alpha Trader newsletter. 

He recommended AMZN in May, when it had an Alpha Score of 169. Only six months later, subscribers are up nearly 55%, while the S&P 500 has lost 2.1%.

So, what makes the Alpha Score so good at finding winning stocks and avoiding major losers? It’s the two internal components that comprise this powerful metric — the technical trigger and the fundamental trigger.

I won’t get into all the details of the triggers here. For more on that, you can visit this link. Just know that extensive back testing by a number of studies supports trigger No. 1 as a winning long-term investment strategy, while No. 2 has shown itself to be one of the most reliable indicators of a company’s true fundamental health. 

The Alpha Trader system has results that speak for themselves. It’s quickly become the most explosive indicator in Profitable Trading’s history. The system has spotted many of the best stocks of 2015, rewarding the small handful of investors who knew about it with gains of: 55% in 2 months… 114% in 7 months… 134% in 10 months… and dozens more. 

As such, I’d steer clear of any of the stocks mentioned in the table above. 

As Tom reminds his subscribers, having both parameters of his system in place ensures they’re only buying the market’s soundest, best-performing stocks. And until the 15 companies in the table above start moving in the right direction, Tom is advising his readers to stay away.

On the plus side, Tom brought a slew of new recommendations to his readers this week — including a low-cost airliner with more than 70% upside and an Alpha Score of 190, and a small-cap semiconductor company with robust growth and an Alpha Score of 170. To find out how to get his latest picks — including his top Alpha Trader picks for 2016 — click here.