Biggest Losers Of Finance Are Living Up To Their Billing

Roughly 15 months ago, I asked readers to compile a list of the worst stocks they could think of.  We were looking for crappy businesses: those that were destined for the toilet.

And my readers didn’t disappoint me—compiling a list of 23 stocks that they thought were headed towards financial purgatory.

Keep in mind, one reader’s idea of a stock destined for the sewer could be another reader’s promise of the Pierian spring.  Either way, I tracked the performance of those stocks, with reinvested dividends, and you can see the results below.

23 loser stocks
Sunday July 10, 2011 11:21 PM EDT

The worst stock of the bunch so far is Bank of America, down 42.66 percent.  The reader who picked that stock deserves our congratulations.  You got lucky, by picking the ugliest apple ahead of time.

Another reader figured that Krispe Kreme Doughnut was headed for the trash bin.  That reader was wrong, with Krispe Kreme gaining 95.7 percent over the past 15 months.

The second task I set for readers (at the same time) was to help me create a list of 10 superb, actively managed mutual funds.  The job was to choose funds that they thought would do well.

As great as these funds were supposed to be, I suggested that over the long run the funds’ fees would likely hamper their results, and that the stocks everybody hated might prove to be more profitable than the aggregate results of the mutual funds.

So far, the mutual funds are pounding the loser stocks.

Results from April 14, 2010 to July 9, 2011

• The Ten Super Mutual Funds: +13.22 percent
• The 23 Loser Stocks: +2.02 percent
• Vanguard’s Total Stock Market index: +17.2 percent

Selected Super Funds
Sunday July 10, 2011 11:09 PM EDT

My hope of course, is for the Biggest Loser stocks to eventually surpass the super mutual funds above.

And why not?  As a group, the fund managers above haven’t added any value over the past 15 months.  Eighty percent of them (8/10) have underperformed Vanguard’s total stock market index.

As a group, they’re destined to fall even further behind the market.

But what do you think of the Biggest Losers?  Could they eventually surprise us and overtake the Super Funds above?  And what surprises you, so far, about this little contest?