5 of Last Week's Biggest Losers

There's never a shortage of losers in the stock market. Let's take a closer look at five of this past week's biggest sinkers.

Source: Barron's.

Let's start with NovaGold. It was a brutal week for gold, but NovaGold's steep decline was made worse by its disappointing quarterly results. The Vancouver-based gold miner posted a larger deficit than analysts had been forecasting.

McEwen Mining picked the wrong week to have upbeat news. The gold producer announced that a new gold zone is emerging at its El Gallo 1 Mine in Mexico, but investors naturally shrugged off the news as the yellow metal fell in price. A discovery is only as good as a miner's ability to monetize it.

Titan Machinery broke down. The retailer of agricultural and construction equipment posted disappointing quarterly results. The chain of 106 stores posted a far smaller profit than Wall Street was expecting. Shareholders shouldn't be surprised. Titan has now come up short in three of its past four quarters.

Fortinet also let down its shareholders after issuing discomforting guidance. The network security provider now sees a first-quarter profit of $0.10 a share on no more than $136 million in revenue. Wall Street was banking on a profit on earnings of $0.12 a share on a little more than $140 million in revenue.

Questcor Pharmaceuticals slipped after Favus Institutional Research downgraded the stock from "buy" to "sell." The analysts at Favus fear that sluggish sales of the company's controversially expensive Achtar gel will result in weak financial results.

Ready for a bounce
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