Sift through the wreckage of beaten-down companies and you'll likely find a few wonderful stocks. Lately, the stock market has blessed patient investors with plenty of thrashed financial companies.
But the savviest investors know that willy-nilly contrarianism isn't a sure path to riches. Often, companies get punished for all the right reasons. And in those cases, it can be so much worse than you think.
With that in mind, I used our new Motley Fool CAPS screening tool to find beaten-down financial stocks the online CAPS community loves to hate. These are the stocks CAPS players avoid like the plague.
They are also:
- Capitalized at more than $200 million.
- Down at least 25% over the past year
- Rated one star, the lowest possible, by our CAPS community.
Remember, in the first year for which we have data, one-star companies flamed out with an average loss of nearly 17%.
|
Company |
Share Price |
Market Cap |
|---|---|---|
|
Alesco Financial |
$3.45 |
$205 million |
|
Ambac |
$4.63 |
$1.3 billion |
|
Capital One |
$53.00 |
$19.9 billion |
|
Downey Financial |
$14.14 |
$394 million |
|
Fannie Mae |
$28.30 |
$27.7 billion |
|
Freddie Mac |
$24.91 |
$16.1 billion |
|
IndyMac |
$3.25 |
$263 million |
|
Lehman Brothers |
$44.24 |
$24.5 billion |
|
National City |
$6.30 |
$4.0 billion |
|
UBS |
$33.59 |
$64.3 billion |
Data from Motley Fool CAPS and Yahoo! Finance as of April 30.
Are these companies poised for a turnaround? Or is the pain just beginning? Come and join us at CAPS to let us know what you think. Our 100,000-strong (and counting) CAPS community wants to hear your opinion.
For more CAPS content:
