This is Why I Threw Your Stock Away

It's now been two months since I started throwing stocks away. Every week, I single out a stock that I feel should be chucked out of your portfolio, explain my reasons why, and then offer up three worthy replacements.

Since I'm all about accountability, I figured I'd take a quick peek back at how the first seven stocks that I've dissed are faring these days:

With the exception of taking GM to the junkyard last week -- and perhaps HP's flattish ways despite the recently buoyant market -- I'm feeling pretty good about the cleanup process.

One can argue that these absolute numbers need a little relative color, and I agree. I'll concede that the Nasdaq Composite has fallen by 7% since I booted Yahoo!. However, it has also climbed 4% higher since I gave HP the heave-ho. With the exception of General Motors, the other six bearish calls have beaten the market.

Rummaging through the garbage
I've tried to scatter my litter around. I've gone with stocks that are both hot (like Research in Motion at the time and Hewlett-Packard) and cold (like Starbucks and GM). Now let's flesh out the individual theories.

"The near-term upside is limited, but the downside is not," I wrote in dismissing Yahoo! nearly two months ago. "As soon as Microsoft is out of the question -- either through a little more conviction in its exit strategy or regulatory fears -- Yahoo! will be valued on its own merits. It won't be pretty."

That is exactly what happened. This week's letdown of a quarterly report isn't helping things, but Yahoo! has an uphill battle now in justifying its lofty valuation relative to its faster growing peers.

"Starbucks is now fetching a rather lofty 22 times this year's profit expectations," I noted in tossing the java heavy. "That's rich for a company looking to post lower earnings this year."

Yes, shares of Starbucks had come down a long way leading into my early June bearish growl, but it was still valued at a premium to its unsure growth. I can appreciate the company's aggressive move into smoothies this month, but wonder if it will shoo away more latte sippers than it attracts in banana blenders.

Betting against BlackBerry maker Research in Motion was simply a move to get out of the way of the 3G iPhone debut. I was right. The iPhone sold a million units during its first weekend on the market, and BlackBerry is no longer the undisputed smartphone leader.

The move to nix eBay was motivated by the growing unrest among the website's power sellers and fears of the online marketplace losing relevance. Yes, eBay still has PayPal -- and I'm a huge fan of PayPal -- but it still overpaid for Skype and doesn't have much of a plan to get back on track beyond populating its site with Buy.com listings.

Kicking Mr. Softy to the curb was the end result after lamenting the company's profitless online subsidiary, growing Vista aversion, and the migration to cheaper cloud computing solutions. Last week's report was actually better than I expected, but the market wanted more as it sent the stock to the barber for another haircut.

My more recent bearish calls on Hewlett-Packard and General Motors will need more than a few trading days to gauge. As cool as those new touch screen HPs are, they're no Macs. GM may have come through with a junkyard bounce, but I think it will be a long time before the struggling automaker completes its turnaround.

Keep on trucking
I'm not cocky enough to serve crow, if only because I've swallowed down plenty over the years. I also realize that this overview may be incomplete if I don't delve into the replacement stocks that I suggest take the place of these panned picks.

All in good time, I suppose. Just know that the garbage truck will come around next Monday, ready for a new stock to trash. If you have any nominations, let me know using the comment box below.

So little time, so much to clean up.

Other headlines out of the weekly dumpster:

• This week's latest throwaway stock
• Do You Still Own This Garbage?
• It's So Much Worse Than You Think