Wild Card Stocks for 2010 under $3: (VG, C, STEM)

If you only have few bucks floating around and want to try to catch the best bang for your buck in 2010, look no further than investing in VoIP, stem cells, and the U.S. Financial system.  Your weapons of choice are shares of Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE:VG), StemCells, Inc. (NASDAQ:STEM) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C).

StemCells, Inc. (STEM) and Vonage Holdings Corp. (VG) sell for under $1.50 each and Citigroup Inc. (C) with its massive 76 billion market cap is now priced at $3.35 a share.  Why gamble in Vegas when you can gamble online in your trading account? These are the Wild card stocks for 2010 and if there are any industries that should make a comeback or breakout next year, its VoIP, stem cell research, and most frequently traded U.S. Financial system.

BANKING ON CITI
Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) announced Wednesday that it has repaid the $20 billion it received from the government last year as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  The move frees the bank from employee pay restrictions in 2010 that regulators imposed as part of the financial aid. Citigroup said its capital ratios are now among some of the strongest in the industry.  With Wednesday’s transactions, the bank said its Tier 1 capital would have been $101.7 billion at the end of the third quarter, compared to $22.9 billion at the end of December 31, 2008. 

Why not go long on Citigroup now that the Treasury Department has postponed its plans to start selling the government's 34% stake in Citigroup. Treasury had expected to reap a substantial profit on the shares, which it acquired at $3.25, but selling now would instead result in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Let the powers that be get Citi shares back toward $4, then cash in, why not do the same yourself?  Do you really think the Government is going to sell low?  As the ol' saying goes -- Buy low, sell high.

GO VoIP via VG
247WallSt.com reported yesterday that VoIP and biotech are expected to post remarkably rapid growth over the next decade. Cable companies and voice providers including Skype and Vonage (NYSE:VG) are expected to damage revenue from the landline businesses of larger rivals including AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ).  New research from IBISWorld predicts that accumulative revenue growth from 2010 to 2019 will be 150% while landline revenue will shrink 52%.

Vonage shares have received some attention this week and are up 17% over the past 5 trading sessions closing today at $1.42.   The big jump this week is thanks to Vonage introducing an upgraded mobile-phone service that offers unlimited international calls for $24.99 a month.  The new phone software lets Vonage customers call more than 60 countries from devices such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone (AAPL) and Research In Motion Ltd.’s (RIMM) BlackBerry, Vonage said in a statement. Customers who use Vonage to make international calls from home will get a 40 percent discount on their home-phone plan if they add the new mobile-phone service, the company said. 

If Vonage has a future then getting in at the $1 level as opposed to the $17 IPO price back in 2006 is worth investors' attention.

STEM CELLS via OBAMA
President Barack Obama signed a executive order, on March 9th, which removed barriers to "responsible" scientific research involvng human stem cells. This was quite the change from president Bush's administration when stem-cell research was not allowed any federal funding.  Hello StemCells Inc (STEM) at $1.37 a share.

StemCells shares got down to $1 a share then bounced back earlier this month after the company announced it landed the approval by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the first 13 human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for use in NIH-funded research under the NIH Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research adopted in July 2009. 

We'll check back in later in 2010 to see how these wild card picks are doing, but for now here WallStNation.com's Wild Card Stocks for 2010 under $3 (Citigroup is over $3 but not by much):
Vonage Holdings Corp. (NYSE:VG), StemCells, Inc. (NASDAQ:STEM) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C).

Disclaimer: No positions in any of the securities mentioned in this publication.