Tuesday's Worst Stocks in the World

Bad days. We all have them; some of us deserve them.

Here are five stocks whose naughty ways drew investors' scorn on Tuesday:

Naughty?
Well, OK, we can't exactly call these stocks naughty. But none of them gets much love from our 81,000-person-strong Motley Fool CAPS community of amateur and professional stock pickers.

To the contrary. When it comes to these stocks, CAPS investors have gone thumbs-down more often than film critic Roger Ebert. They don't believe any one of these stocks is worth owning, and they think some may be worth shorting.

Which of today's candidates is worst? Read on, dear Fool.

Worse
We begin with Blockbuster, which is taking a beating because of Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) announcement that it would begin offering movie rentals from all the major studios in February.

Makes sense to me. Blockbuster Total Access has been a profit-eating monster, leaving this once-proud movie rental king without an army to defend its realm.

Shouldn't Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) get the nod here, too? Not really. Watch Now is an established service with a following that, if delivered well, could be transformed into a profit-booster. Blockbuster can't yet make that claim. (And may never be able to.)

Worser
Next up is New York & Co., which reported a 3.5% decline in same-store sales for November and December. The company also revised its fourth-quarter guidance for per-share earnings from continuing operations. The guidance went from between $0.23 and $0.32 to between $0.15 and $0.19.

Press reports say that analysts blame steep discounting for the poor results. Ouch.

What's troubling to me is that New York & Co. isn't some high-falutin' fashionista. To the contrary, its offerings are supposed to be stylish and affordable. If its already-thin margins are declining further, there's probably much more than a weak economy at work here.

Worst
Our winner was almost Overstock for a $20 million buyback designed in part to mop up excessive dilution arising from stock options exercises. (Here's why that stinks.)

But I can't give Coldwater Creek a pass. Management played coy with investors by sneaking a layoff announcement into an 8-K without a press release last week. Then, Monday, it reported awful same-store sales, and even worse earnings guidance.

To me, that means Coldwater Creek executives saw the icy path in front of them and did nothing to warn investors, who deserved the whole story.

Coldwater Creek and its let's-just-slip-this-in-and-see-if-investors-notice management team ... Tuesday's worst stock in the CAPS world.

Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think by signing up for CAPS today. It's 100% free to participate. All skill levels welcome.

I'll be back tomorrow with more stock horror stories.