Forget Snapchat - Almost Any Other Stock is a Better Place to Park Your Money

The pace of IPOs may be picking up since Q4's lull, but that doesn't mean all of those new public offerings are worth taking a risk on. Among the least ownable? BigTrends.com's President and Chief Analyst thinks the ballyhooed Snapchat IPO may not only be overrated, but downright dangerous.

As Headley explained on CNBC's The Rundown on Sunday, "I'm very cautious. I usually will try to ride these IPOs a little bit at an early stage, but this is one that I wouldn't touch. I think we'll get some hype and some initial lift, but you've got to think to, for example, Facebook's IPO. Remember when Facebook IPO'd, that stock IPO'd in the low $40's and went down into the low $20's. Of course, that was a great buy if you rode it out, but that was almost a 50% haircut from the IPO to its bottom, and that tells me that even if it (Snapchat) has longer-term potential I think there's a little too much hype around that IPO and I think you've got to be careful. I would actually steer clear of it and look for clearer money-making companies, of which there are plenty."

Snapchat is an online messaging service that competes with Facebook's messenger, Instagram, and others. Indeed, Facebook once tried to acquire Snapchat, but after being rebuffed, Facebook CEO opted to develop his own messaging platform. In retrospect, the lack of earnings in its past and the unlikelihood of net profits in its foreseeable future has some observers thinking the company missed its window of opportunity to cash out.... figuratively and literally.

Headley is optimistic on most other stocks though, new or old. He explained to CNBC's 'The Rundown' host Akiko Fujita, "We've seen such good earnings here, with about 3/4 of companies beating their earnings estimates in the S&P 500 for the fourth quarter. And more importantly, the reactions to the news are good. Even in lagging sectors like retail, where there's been all the concerns about the border tax, you're seeing retail stocks doing well this past week. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, even Macy's initially popped on its earnings. So, you're getting good reactions to earnings. That's what you want to see that tells you, again, there's some more buyers out there... especially the institutions that drive the train want to be in on this."

The BigTrends.com founder knows why, too. He explained how this market is well supported despite the fact that it's been unusually bullish for so long, "There's just been too much cash on the sidelines that frankly has to go into stocks because bonds haven't been performing. They've stabilized, and it's good that they've stabilized. I don't want to see bonds take like they did in October and November. That would be bad if rates are going up. But, stabilization is actually going to put a nice floor in place for equities as long as rates don't go up much more."

To see the CNBC clip, go here.