The CAPS Screen: 10 Financial Time Bombs

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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:

• Is It Time to Sell?
• The CAPS Screen: 10 Financial Powerhouses
• Contrarian Shopping List