The CAPS Screen: 10 Financial Time Bombs

By Ilan Moscovitz (TMF Diogenes)
May 27, 2008 | Comments (0)

Recs

4

Sift through the wreckage of beaten-down companies, and you'll likely find a few wonderful stocks. Lately, the stock market has blessed patient investors with plenty of thrashed financial companies.

But the savviest investors know that willy-nilly contrarianism isn't a sure path to riches. Often, companies get punished for all the right reasons. And in those cases, their plight can be as bad as you think, and worse.

With that in mind, I used our new Motley Fool CAPS screening tool to find beaten-down financial stocks the online CAPS community loves to hate. These are the stocks CAPS players avoid like the plague.

They're also:

  • Capitalized at more than $200 million.
  • Down at least 25% over the past year.
  • Rated one star, the lowest possible rank, by our CAPS community.

Remember, in the first year for which we have data, one-star companies flamed out with an average loss of nearly 17%.

Company

Share Price

Market Cap

Corus Bankshares (Nasdaq: CORS)

$5.35

$294 million

Credit Suisse

$52.29

$53.0 billion

Downey Financial (NYSE: DSL)

$8.29

$231 million

Fifth Third Bancorp (Nasdaq: FITB)

$19.26

$10.2 billion

FirstFed Financial (NYSE: FED)

$16.36

$223 million

Fortress Investment

$13.69

$1.3 billion

Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE)

$25.73

$16.6 billion

MBIA (NYSE: MBI)

$7.37

$2.0 billion

Sovereign Bancorp (NYSE: SOV)

$8.51

$4.1 billion

Zions Bancorp

$42.81

$4.6 billion

Data from Motley Fool CAPS and Yahoo! Finance.

Are these companies poised for a turnaround? Or is the pain just beginning? Come and join us at CAPS to let us know what you think. Our 105,000-strong (and counting) CAPS community wants to hear your opinion.

For more CAPS content:

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Ilan Moscovitz's gelato screen turned up strawberry and mango, both of which flavors he eagerly awaits. He doesn't own any of the companies mentioned in this article. The Fool's disclosure policy is always on the menu.

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Related Tickers

9/14/2009 9:30 AM
CORS $0.20 Down +0.00 +0.00%
Corus Bankshares,… CAPS Rating: *
DSL $0.05 Down +0.00 +0.00%
Downey Financial C… CAPS Rating: *
FRE $1.15 Up +0.01 +0.88%
Freddie Mac CAPS Rating: *
FITB $10.05 Up +0.08 +0.75%
Fifth Third Bancor… CAPS Rating: **
MBI $3.60 Up +0.11 +3.15%
MBIA, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
SOV $2.47 Down +0.00 +0.00%
Sovereign Bancorp,… CAPS Rating: **
FED $0.11 Down +0.00 +0.00%
FirstFed Financial… CAPS Rating: *

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