5 Superball Stocks

When stocks fall fast and far, they sometimes set themselves up for remarkable rebounds. The following equities suffered dramatic drops over the past week. With help from the 180,000 members of Motley Fool CAPS, we'll see whether any of them have the potential to bounce back.

It's been a while, but thanks to last week's sell-off, we once again have a chance to stand beneath Mr. Market's silverware drawer in hopes of snagging a bargain. Let's meet today's contenders:

Companies are selected by screening on finviz.com for abrupt 10% or greater price drops last week. 52-week high and recent price data provided by finviz.com. CAPS ratings from Motley Fool CAPS.

Five super falls -- one superball
With the S&P 500 down a full 2% in last week's trading, you might expect that quite a few stocks got hurt pretty bad -- and you'd be right. In fact, nearly 5,000 separate companies exited the abbreviated week lower than they entered it.

Some stocks are doing even worse. The five named up above for example, have all been literally decimated, losing 10% (or more) of their market cap over the past five trading days. So what went wrong?

Well, beginning at the bottom, Star Scientific has been sliding ever since it announced, a couple weeks back, that it was getting out of the smokeless tobacco business and focusing instead on hawking dietary supplements. The wisdom of that move got thrown further into question when supplements tsar Herbalife got tossed in the trash a few days ago, on news that hedge fund star Bill Ackman has gone heavily short Herbalife stock.

Not all bear cases were as clear cut, however. For example, VirnetX is down 11% since last Thursday despite apparently making progress in its virtual private network-patent lawsuits against Apple (AAPL 1.27%). DryShips dropped 10% over a similar time frame... apparently for no good reason whatsoever (unless you count the fiscal cliff as a reason).

And speaking of sinking ships...
Of course, that still leaves the top stock on today's list to discuss: five-star-rated medical robot maker MAKO Surgical. Like VirnetX and DryShips, MAKO has had no bad news to report of late. Like VirnetX and DryShips, however, it's sinking like a stone regardless. But should it be?

After all, CAPS member bcellars argues that after having been "beaten down" hard, MAKO now has "lots of potential upside."

Fool staffer TMFHumbleServant says the company continues "to make progress in attracting larger hospital systems to become customers."

And SophicF00L points out that "the number of robotic arms sold increased this quarter (15 sold 3Q 2012) and it's just beginning to get traction in the medical community. Once these 'razors' are sold, the 'blades' will follow and ... there is the possibility of the use of the robotic arm to be expanded to include shoulders ..."

That hardly sounds like bad news or reason to sell the stock. And yet, the fact remains that MAKO is a company still in search of a profitable business. It's lost money every year it's been publish, and continues to burn cash at an alarming rate.

Over the past 12 months, MAKO's burned through more than $44 million. If it keeps going at this pace, MAKO will burn through its $28 million bank account in less than eight months -- and need to either borrow cash, or dilute its shareholders, to keep the doors open and stay in business.

Foolish takeaway
All in all, I have to say that the prospects for MAKO don't look good at this point. The stock's selling for less than half the price it started at for the year -- but it's still not cheap enough to justify a buy.