These 5 Penny Stocks Have More Upside Than You Think

They might be tiny, but the upside is too big to ignore on these penny stocks. Joining us today with a list of five penny stocks you maybe tried to avoid, but again, that upside prediction is way too strong to ignore on these five names. Chris, I'm so excited to go through this list today. Let's just get right to it. What is the first penny stock on this list? So the first stock we're talking about today, Bridget, is a company called Vaxart. Ticker symbol is VXRT. This is one of two companies that we're going to be talking about here that are in the biotech space. And the biotech space is where a lot of investors will find penny stocks. The reason for that is these companies generally don't have revenue and they're not profitable yet. That's exactly where Vaxart sits in there. The story behind Vaxart is it's a clinical stage biotechnology company that's trying to turn vaccines into simple oral tablets rather than injections. One concern that some people have about getting vaccines is they may have needle fear. This takes that away. Again, it just puts it in a very convenient oral tablet form. If the platform works and the company can get FDA approval, this could really lower the cost for logistics of getting mass immunization. It could open the door to licensing deals for this company. But like a lot of the companies in here, it's important to remember they don't have any approved products yet. This is a pure speculation on their ability to get the product through clinical trials. Yeah. Penny stocks pretty much equal speculation. I think a lot of investors know that, but there is a lot of intrigue and interest and bullish outlook on the ideas that these five companies we're going to talk about today really have, especially from analysts, which analysts rarely cover these tiny companies. All of the companies we're talking about today at least have some analyst interest simply because the idea is that powerful. So this company definitely qualifies. Again, like Chris hinted towards, we do have one other biotech name that's actually going to wrap up the end of this video because it has some really timely catalysts that are just coming up for this company that could have potential impact on that stock price in the short term. So definitely a name you want to stay tuned for. Chris, one other question on this first stock that we talked about today. This one has barely any analyst coverage, but it does seem like the one analyst that's following it is really interested in some future growth ahead for this one. You know, that's going to be the case with a lot of penny stocks. And we've talked about this on the channel before. One of the risks of investing in penny stocks is that you don't get a lot of that analyst coverage. It's a chicken and egg situation. Analysts don't have a lot of fundamental data to go off of. Therefore, they stay away from the stock. The important thing to remember if you're an investor is penny stocks don't necessarily mean they're not viable, but it means you have to have conviction in a story rather than point to fundamental indicators that suggest, yes, the stock is definitely going to do this because fundamental analysis and technical analysis are really good at pointing you to what a stock should do. But in this case, there's just not a lot of fundamental data to go off of. Yeah, really good point and an interesting name to look at. A little bit more of a risk, like you said, because there isn't really a product there yet. So you're relying on this idea to come to fruition. And that might be true of the second name that we're talking about, too. This is another very tiny company, Chris. Yeah, so we're talking about TRX Gold. It pretty much goes without saying that we're talking about a gold mining stock at a time when gold, from what I saw before we came on, Bridget, gold's knocking on the door of that $5,000 price target, which would be the big number that a lot of gold bugs have been looking for. But the question for a lot of investors in 2026 is if you're going to be investing in gold, do you want to go the physical gold route or do you want to go the mining route? TRX is setting up as one that gives a lot of support to the idea that you might want to look at the mining stocks. And here's why. The company reported earnings last week. They delivered record output. They reported the margin was expanding. They reported growth acceleration. And all of that stems from the higher spot price of gold. This is really no different of a story than it is for oil companies. When the price of oil is at a certain level, it's much more profitable for them to drill for oil and to try to drill for new wells and do those things. It's the same thing with the price of gold. With price of gold being now up at record highs, it's just much more profitable for these gold mining companies to expand their operations, to look for new opportunities. And that's what's happening with TRX Gold. Now, this is again, this is a tiny, tiny company. The market cap of the company is only 278 million dollars. And that's even with the stock being up over 200 percent in the last year. So this is a small company. It's a small mining stock. But that's where an opportunity may really be with this company. Yeah, we've seen that with gold companies before. We'll get to that in a minute. I do want to let investors watching this know the number you shared about gold are too big to ignore that new all-time high for gold. If you want to look at the latest information on where gold could be headed in 2026, make sure to check out our free premium report just for our YouTube viewers. This is normally only for MarketPeep subscribers, but you can look at it for free. Thomas Hughes wrote this one and it's a full outlook on where gold could be headed in 2026 and some specific stock tickers that investors might want to look at related to gold. So check out that premium report by scanning the QR code or clicking the link in the description to look at the 2026 gold forecast. All right, let's get back to this tiny little gold mining stock. One thing we've heard of in gold mining companies before, especially when they're really small like this, is if you can get in before they have a new mine online, we've seen gold mining stocks really kind of explode. Is that at all the case with this one? Do they have an operational mine underway right now? They are actively mining gold right now, and you're seeing that in their last earnings report, their revenue is going up. Now, again, it's still not a profitable company yet, but the revenue is going up and they did announce in their earnings report that they're expanding their operations and that those are on schedule. So, again, it's not a bad time to be looking at this stock because there's probably the potential for more upside here than there might be with some of the larger mining companies. But the larger mining companies are going to provide more stability. But again, we're talking about penny stocks here. And if you're going to be in with penny stocks, then you know to expect some volatility. An interesting name to look at, and especially since they did announce that there is expansion and growth on the horizon, which can always be a big mover for these smaller penny stock gold mines. All right. A good second pick to look at, Chris. Let's get to the third name on the list. And this might be the only familiar name for some of our viewers. Yeah, it's Data Vault AI. We've talked about it a lot on the channel. It seems to be very popular with retail investors right now. Story here with Data Vault, we've talked about it a lot. It's a stock that sits at the crossroads of AI, data, monetization, blockchain. The company's mission is very simple to understand, but the devil may be in the execution. The company's trying to help other companies turn their raw data into tradable revenue generating digital assets. So you can think of it as a data as an asset class story. The reality behind this is the model is still experimental. Revenue visibility is somewhat cloudy at this point. Institutional ownership is under 1% at this time. Again, that doesn't mean that you have to stay away from the stock, but it's it is a stock that it's going to take a long time to deliver on the promise of what they're trying to do. That isn't stopping many retail investors from being very excited about it. There's a couple of analysts that cover it. They have a $4 price target on the stock within the next 12 months. That would be almost a 400% gain. Again, you're looking at the company and you're saying you believe in what that business model is and that there's going to be a payoff. Yeah, absolutely. And this is another really good story looking at the chart for this one of how quickly these penny stocks can move. And that's why you do see a lot of short interest in this because those traders know short term trades on some of these penny stocks can can bring big moves. I know this one was down around 50 to 60 cents at the end of the year, December 30th, the 31st time frame. Then it had a huge jump of over 100% in just one day and then very quickly moved back down. So I think this is a good illustration. Would you expect this kind of volatility, those 100% swings to be possible with some of the other names we're talking about on this list, too? Yes, absolutely. And I think that's that's something that's a it's a great point you're bringing up, Bridget, because the perspective that I'm bringing in this video is something that I'm talking to investors who are willing to buy and hold these stocks, not try to time the stock like a trader might do the traders for traders. These stocks have a lot more flexibility as far as when they might want to get in and when they want to get out. But I'm looking at this as you're either going to be a trader that's willing to take a long position in these stocks, which means you're not going to touch the stock for at least a year, or you're somebody that's looking to buy and hold these stocks and say, I'm going to buy the stocks. I'm going to buy it at a certain price. If it gets below that price, I'll buy more. If it gets above that price, I'm not going to touch it. And I'm not going to try to time when the entry is. I'm just going to hold on to the stock with conviction. And that's when sometimes the biggest gains can be made. I think that's great information for any investor who's looking at penny stocks. There's different ways to look at them. You can play the volatility or you can make a more long term investment and hope that there's a long term payout a few years down the road. So great explanation, Chris. Thank you for that. All right, Chris, let's get on to the fourth name on your list. And this is a name that's had kind of a rough last year or even two years almost. The company that I'm talking about here is Microvision, ticker symbol is MVIS. This is a company that plays in the LIDAR space for autonomous driving, smart infrastructure, industrial sensing. So the idea here is that if you have autonomous car manufacturers that are using compact, cost-effective LIDAR, that this company will take off if adoption of autonomous driving takes off, which is expected to do. Now, to your point, Bridget, Microvision was one of those companies that came to market around 2021. I think it was maybe early 2021 or mid 2021. And that's a time when a lot of companies like this came to market and everybody thought that this was going to be a golden age for electric vehicles, a golden age for autonomous driving. And what you're seeing is that story didn't necessarily materialize within those first two or three years. And a lot of that is an interest rate story. Interest rates went up. A lot of these companies that have to borrow to fund their operations got caught in the idea of, oh, wait a second. We don't have the money to actually make these ambitions successful. That's starting to turn around now in the last year. You're starting to see now interest rates are a little bit more favorable. And you're starting to see that maybe people were jumping the gun a little bit on autonomous driving in 2021, but now you're starting to see much more momentum for autonomous in 2026. And that's where the story of Microvision gets interesting. Yeah, this is an interesting story right now. I love that comparison to maybe it was a little bit early when it first came out, because we're definitely seeing the momentum in autonomous vehicles right now. I think it's important to talk about with this one, that Tesla is not included in this story, that this is really other autonomous vehicles, maybe the Waymo's and the other ones that we're starting to see in popularity. Talk about that a little bit more. It's always good to try to understand what these penny stocks, what the bull case is and what the bear case is. And for Microvision, there's two potential obstacles to their growth. One comes from Tesla and Elon Musk has been very outspoken in the past that Tesla does not use LIDAR, uh, and Tesla is not going to use LIDAR. So Microvision is competing against Tesla, which is a, which controls a lot of the market share in the EV market right now, and is expected to take some market share in that autonomous space, which doesn't use LIDAR. There are also some competitors for Microvision in the LIDAR space, names like Luminar, Innoviz, Ouster. Now, some of these companies are having their own challenges right now, but. Analysts are still seeing big upside for the whole autonomous driving sector in general, and for companies like Microvision specifically, this is another stock though, that institutional ownership is low, short interest is high. Just means there's going to be volatility. Volatility ahead for sure. And really kind of depends on where the development of these autonomous vehicles continues to go. And if other companies decided to follow Tesla's suit and not use LIDAR in their vehicles or not. So interesting story. Um, all of the names on this list are rather risky. The last one you have coming up as a really interesting catalyst. So I almost thought about adding the last one to Bridget's buys, but I think I'm going to add this one again. I think it might be one of the riskiest plays I've ever added onto my, my paper trading watch list, but I like the analyst outlook for this one. And I also like the momentum I'm seeing in the autonomous driving story. Uh, if you're in one of the areas or cities where these vehicles are going, they seem very popular. I was just in Arizona and they were all over the place. So we'll be interesting to see if that makes an impact on the stock or not. So this is what I'm adding to Bridget's buys watch list. If you haven't followed that watch list yet, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. It's a great way to follow along with all of the stocks we talk about on this channel and kind of see how they move over time. All right, Chris, let's get to this last name. And this is one that has a really interesting timely catalyst on the horizon. So yes, the last company we have on the list is, um, this is another clinical stage biotech company. They're focused on developing therapeutics and diagnostic products to treat breast cancer and other breast related conditions, like all the stocks that we've talked about on this list. This is a penny stock. This is a very small company. This company only has like a $79 million market cap. So small company, always some high risk in the biotech space, especially for clinical stage companies, but two things that investors should be looking at with optimism for this company just in this month, January, 2026, the companies received two positive nods in terms of FDA events just, uh, last week, actually January 16th, um, the U S FDA announced they gave the company orphan drug designation status to the company's clinical product named indoxafen for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Orphan drug designations are given to companies that are trying to find treatments for rare diseases that might not have the same sample base available for a clinical trial. So this is a big step for the company because now they can move forward with that trial, even though they might not have as many patients in the trial. That's one thing. The other thing is that that same drug indoxafen on January 6th, the FDA issued a study may proceed letter. So the company can now move that drug, um, further into clinical trials. And that is, again, that is for treatment of breast cancer. The company here that we're talking about is Atasa genetics. Ticker symbol is A T O S clinical stage company, no revenue. It's not profitable, but if you look at the analyst rating, it's covered by five analysts. That's a lot for a stock. That's this small. And those analysts have a consensus price target of $6 and 33 cents on the stock. That's the largest upside of any of the stocks on this list. Yeah, this is a super interesting company. Again, what I maybe should have done on Burton's pies, but we're going to stick with the original choice, but this is a great biotech company. I get a risk, but it's in several different areas that are really big areas of research right now. So a great name to look at Chris, if you are interested in other biotech names, Chris and I recently did a video on the next tech boom is biotech. This is a really great list of biotech names to look at too.