3 Stocks Failing to Keep Pace With the Dow

Although earnings seasons got off to a rocky start the other day, Tuesday featured enough good news to propel the Dow higher 125 points, or 1%. That wasn't enough for some stocks that fell sharply on the day giving back hard fought gains earned in prior sessions. Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) tumbled 17% after it was announced there would be no deal anytime soon in the aftermath of the Softbank takeover by Sprint (NYSE: S). It's been my contention that Clearwire and its spectrum is the ultimate target of the Japanese wireless specialist.

James River Coal (NASDAQ: JRCC) also gave up 11%, though on no particular news. Its shares were up 130% over the past three months and gained 23% just the day before, which is why I cautioned investors to enjoy the party while it lasted.

Below are three more stocks that fell Tuesday while the market soared. Now don't run over the cliff with your stock like a bunch of lemmings: it could just be a temporary situation. Let's first see whether they had good reason to fall as panic-fueled routs can sometimes lead to excellent buying opportunities.

From chaos, order?
Although investors reacted as if there was no hope for ISIS Pharmaceuticals to recover from the Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee documents indicating deep concerns over its lead drug candidate Kynamro, the Fool's Brenton Flynn suggests hope still exists for a positive outcome because of the rareness of the disease it targets.

Isis is developing Kynamro in conjunction with Genzyme, a unit of Sanofi (NYSE: SNY), to treat homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, or HoFH, a rare genetic disease that can cause cholesterol levels to rise two to four times higher than normal and prohibits them from responding to standard therapies like Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE) Lipitor. The advisory committee said Kynamro ended up causing abnormal growths in patients taking the medication more so than in those who took a placebo.

The FDA advisory panel said Aegerion Pharmaceuticals' (NASDAQ: AEGR) lomitapide also caused similar growths, but because it had a risk management plan in place to tackle the proble, it approved its use in adults. Biotech investors are often well aware of the risks inherent in betting early on a drug, but tell me in the comments box below if you agree Isis can still win approval.

Half and half
Drilling for gas in Papua New Guinea hasn't been an easy process for InterOil, which has to deal with parochial interests and greedy prejudices to bring its LNG operation to fruition. The government keeps grabbing at a greater share of the project, and the driller just agreed to cede half of the gas supply from its Elk and Antelope fields in a bid to move it forward.

InterOil's been plagued by delays from the government, which accused it of changing the agreements they had in place. Finally, the gas driller said it would be willing to split the production equally if it can just get the plans approved. What could be the saving grace for InterOil is that the proposal gives it the right to the first half of the production output, thus giving it its money upfront, with the balance going to the government. 

Considering that ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) will be firing up a LNG drilling operation in 2014 there, InterOil needs to get the project off the dime, and apparently feels giving away the store is the way to achieve it.

To-tier financials
There was no specific news that should have sent shares of Synovus Financial lower yesterday when the rest of the market was going higher. The Motley Fool CAPS Commercial Banks sector only dropped a quarter of a percentage point, so Synovus' near-4% tumble was more the exception than the rule.

I've found the improving credit profile of the bank to be a heartening endeavor because it was because of an across-the-board decline in total credit costs, non-performing loan inflows, nonperforming assets, and total delinquencies. Its Tier 1 capital ratio and Tier 1 common equity ratio also increased and it trades at just a fraction of its book value.

While it still has to pay back its TARP bailout funds and faces new stress tests, those won't happen till next year and should turn into positive drivers for the bank. I've rated Synovus Financial to outperform the broad market indexes on CAPS, the 180,000 member-driven investment community that transforms investor opinion into ratings from one to five stars. Synovus carries a four-star ranking, suggesting that investors believe this bank has come back from the brink.