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These Stocks Are the Biggest Sells in Consumer Non-Durables

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As an investor, it doesn't pay to follow the crowd.

In this series, though, we highlight a possible exception -- the collective wisdom of our CAPS community. Read the next section if you’re unfamiliar with our methodology. Skip it if you want to go straight to the results.

Why this crowd is different
Jumping into a stock because your rich neighbor did, or because you heard about it from your friend's uncle who used to work on Wall Street, or because CNBC has been talking about it nonstop is a recipe for disaster.

If there's one thing I've learned as a stock analyst, it's that any stock can be gussied up to sound like a world-beater. If there's a second thing I've learned, it's that being a smart person doesn't make you a good investor.

In the hands of a smart person with good communication skills, the never-were and never-will-be stocks sound like tickets to instant fortune. The ancient Greek philosophers made the distinction between rhetoric and knowledge. The former is convincing; the latter is true.

That's why we factor in track record in our Motley Fool CAPS community. We invite everyone to give stocks an outperform (akin to a "buy" call) or underperform rating (akin to a "sell" call) in CAPS. We then use those opinions to calculate a rating for each stock -- from one to five stars (five being the best). But -- and this is a big distinction -- we give more weight to the opinions of folks whose picks have performed well in the past.

The most hated stocks in consumer non-durables
With that methodology as prelude, I present to you every one- and two-star consumer non-durables stock with a market capitalization of more than $100 million and 50 or more underperform ratings. Remember, stocks are rated on a five-star scale by our CAPS community, so one- and two-star stocks are consensus underperforms. The stocks are listed in order of number of underperform picks.

Company

 Market Capitalization (in millions)

52 Week Price Change %

Price-to-Earnings (TTM)

CAPS Rating (out of 5)

Underperform Picks

Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX  )

$1,068

88%

22

*

675

Lululemon Athletica (Nasdaq: LULU  )

$1,944

89%

37.8

*

198

Revlon (NYSE: REV  )

$539

140%

10.5

*

117

Goodyear Tire & Rubber (NYSE: GT  )

$2,343

(41%)

14.4

**

96

Blyth (NYSE: BTH  )

$326

(22%)

16.7

*

95

International Paper (NYSE: IP  )

$9,182

(6%)

45.7

**

73

True Religion (Nasdaq: TRLG  )

$507

(15%)

11.1

**

73

Polo Ralph Lauren

$5,392

21%

16

**

69

Liz Claiborne

$436

7%

N/M

**

68

The Timberland Company

$693

26%

15

**

59

Cooper Tire & Rubber

$1,083

24%

7.7

**

50

Source: Motley Fool CAPS. N/M = not meaningful. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Three companies averaging a stock price double over the past year lead this list. Still, the CAPS community isn’t impressed with Crocs, Lululemon, and Revlon, rating each only one star.

More CAPS members think Crocs is an underperform than any other consumer non-durables stock. Do you think it deserves this lack of love? Make your thoughts known in CAPS by clicking here. Or just go there to do further research on one of these popular stocks.

You can also see which consumer non-durables stocks are rated the top buys by clicking here.

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

Enter your email address below to find out what made Jobs so enraged!

Anand Chokkavelu doesn’t own shares of any company mentioned. The Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Related Tickers

5/25/2012 4:00 PM
LULU $72.06 Down -0.61 -0.84%
Lululemon Athletic… CAPS Rating: **
REV $14.89 Down +0.00 +0.00%
Revlon, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
TRLG $29.77 Down -0.05 -0.17%
True Religion Appa… CAPS Rating: ***
IP $29.31 Down -0.31 -1.05%
International Pape… CAPS Rating: ***
BTH $75.51 Up +0.21 +0.28%
Blyth, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
CROX $17.44 Up +0.35 +2.05%
Crocs, Inc. CAPS Rating: *
GT $10.59 Up +0.17 +1.63%
The Goodyear Tire… CAPS Rating: **

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