Why Did My Stock Just Die?

Your stock just took a nosedive -- but don't panic. First, let's see whether it had good reason to fall. Sometimes, panic-fueled drops can make excellent buying opportunities. Here's the latest crop of cratered stocks that could provide a possibility for profit:

In yet another wild swing, the markets crumbled ahead 228 points late last week, or almost 2%, as investors expected the worst from a "day of rage" in the Middle East. It's a big turnaround, continuing to fit right in with a month known for madness, so stocks that went down by even larger percentages are bigger deals still.

The devil's in the details
Unlike other markets where threats of solar industry subsidy cuts helped pull demand forward, Canadian Solar said its earnings were hurt as Italian customers postponed their purchase decisions despite the massive restructuring the government there is proposing for the industry. That could be because some of the limitations include severely limiting the projects.

Solar companies would have to be connected to the grid by May 31 to qualify, and there is also the imposition of an annual cap on capacity. Investments that have already been made have been put on hold and not only is Canadian Solar affected, but Energy Conversion Devices (Nasdaq: ENER), Suntech Power (NYSE: STP), and many of the other industry players are reeling from the effects. France is also dramatically altering the landscape.

It was hard to come by negative opinion on Canadian Solar before the recent results, as 96% of the CAPS members rating the solar shop had it outperforming the broad market averages and three-quarters of Wall Street's analysts following it agreed. Of course, Europe's dramatic shift in industry support probably couldn't have been foreseen.

Shine a light on the Canadian Solar CAPS page and let us know how the upheaval impacts the industry going forward.

Viral warfare
Novavax (Nasdaq: NVAX) investors take note: despite being all but guaranteed it will be awarded a government contract for supplying the nation's smallpox antiviral stockpile, SIGA Technologies' current earnings don't reflect what might be and investors sent the shares tumbling. Novavax just won an HHS contract to develop vaccines for the prevention of seasonal and pandemic influenza. While the biotech has already given up much of the gains associated with the win, it's due to report earnings later this month and if it doesn't have a sufficiently rosy outlook to offer investors (and SIGA, apparently, did not), Novavax shares could sell off again.

Although CAPS member stuartgordon69 was willing to take the bet that SIGA could suffer a big fall, he thought the risk-reward ratio was skewed in the antiviral maker's favor. Yet now that the stock is down around where it was before the rules rewriting, it might just make an attractive stock to buy once again.

You can follow along on whether SIGA actually comes out ahead here by putting the stock on your watchlist.

That sinking feeling
Despite the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in southwestern Alaska that Northern Dynasty Minerals is developing with Anglo American being a gold mine of opportunity for investors, the stock dropped Thursday for no discernable reason. Moreover, only the day before it had said that it just might be a takeover target for some diversified miner, such as Mitsui (Nasdaq: MITSY) or Mitsubishi.

Anglo, however, thinks many of its partner's statements these days are overly optimistic. It recently tried to rein in expectations set by Northern by saying that until a prefeasibility study was performed it was too early to guess at what the mine's economics would be.

That underscores the doubt expressed back in Januaryby JackCaps, who suggested investors actually read what Northern said about its capabilities before jumping in.

Did any of the [Northern Dynasty] green thumbs take the time to look at the northerndynastyminerals.com web site? Well, if you did, you would see that their "fact sheet" projects that their mining production will not begin until 2018. So they will have several more years with revenues of $0 before they can even hope of selling a tangible mined product. Perhaps I'll reconsider this one next decade to see if they are actually mining something. Until then, this one gets my red thumb.

If there's still too much uncertainty for you, add Northern Dynasty Minerals to the Fool's free portfolio tracker to see whether it will ever really live up to its potential or will simply crash and burn again.

Ready for a resurrection
Just because your stock has taken a beating doesn't mean it's going to roll over and die. Markets are known for overreacting. A closer look at what's happened to your stock can give you an edge over other investors who just react to the market's lead.

That's why it pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS where you can read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made, all from the stock's CAPS page. Then you can decide for yourself whether it's ready to come back from the dead.