Monday'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 Monday.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Motley Fool CAPS.

Naughty?
Well, OK, we can't exactly call these stocks naughty. There are days when five-star winners and newsletter recommendations appear here. Today isn't one of those days, though.

But if you're an investor, you'll have plenty of bad days. The trick is to avoid dating -- or, worse, marrying -- your losers. That's why I listen when our 110,000-person-strong Motley Fool CAPS community of stock pickers speaks with a poor rating or a negative pitch. You should listen, too.

Thus, here is today's list of the worst stocks in the world.

Worse
We begin with Acadia Pharmaceuticals, which on Monday announced that its schizophrenia-treating drug, ACP-104, failed to outperform a placebo in a recent study. Further studies have been cancelled.

Such is the nature of biotech. Failures are common. What's troubling is that Acadia has only one money-earner -- a late-stage drug dubbed pimavanserin for treating psychosis related to Parkinson's disease.

Good results could lead to a nice windfall if a marketing partner is found, but Acadia's best hope, the Associated Press reports, is to compete with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and its treatment for schizophrenia, Risperdal. Trouble is, Risperdal is about to come off patent, and when the door opens to a flood of generics, the performance bar raises much higher for pimavanserin.

Worser
Next up is Energy East, which suffered a setback yesterday when a judge ruled that a planned $4.5 billion merger with Spain's Iberdrola SA would be a bad idea. "The commission should disapprove the transaction precisely because its lack of potential synergies or other benefits (when combined with the attendant risks) means that disapproval would avert a net detriment rather than forfeit an opportunity," said the judge.

Really, sir? With flattening margins and declining returns on invested capital, Energy East needs to find help somewhere.

Worst
But our winner is Chiquita Brands, which got slaughtered after telling investors that it expected a "significant loss" in this year's third quarter. Poor weather and rising costs are apparently to blame.

Then, earlier today, Chiquita sought to calm investors by telling them -- get this -- that current-year results would mirror last year's, when Chiquita lost $0.66 per share, including a one-time $0.09-per-share charge.

Is that all? Everything must be just dandy, then!

Or not. This, after all, is the same company that last year was outed for making protection payments to Colombian terrorists. Investors such as CAPS All-Star sl7vk say it's teetering on the brink of enviro-disaster. Quoting from this Fool's February pitch:

Bananas are in trouble as well. The Cavendish Banana is being eaten by a fungus all over the world. The only place that hasn't been afflicted is Latin and South America. Analysts feel that it is only a matter of time before a clump of soil transported from Australia or Africa sets this process forward. I've heard the number is 20 years or so for the Cavendish Banana. This is the only Banana that Chiquita sells. Big trouble.

Chiquita and its smells-worse-than-a-rotting-banana financial outlook ... Monday's worst stock in the CAPS world.

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