2011 was more or less a wash for stock performance when it was all said and done.  There were several great stories and there were many duds.  24/7 Wall St. has compiled a list of what should be considered investor pet peeves, some of which were systemic and some which were very much company specific.  If it is an unlucky group, it is only fitting to have thirteen such implosions to review.  In a few cases, the price drops seen here were due mostly to outside pressures and some were due to management missteps.  By our take, all of the investors in these names are likely very (very-very) happy that 2011 is over.

The thirteen worst big stock and investor stories in 2011 are as follows: Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC); Diamond Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ: DMND); First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR); Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR); Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ); Imperial Sugar Co. (NASDAQ: IPSU); iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV); K-V Pharmaceutical Company (NYSE: KV-A); Market Vectors Egypt Index ETF (NYSE: EGPT); Molycorp, Inc. (NYSE: MCP); Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX); Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM); and Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD).

Are there others? Of course.  We just wanted to review the worst of the biggest and most easily recognized stories out there.  Some of the explanations and criticisms here may seem a bit raw or overly colorful, but with this motley group what more could you expect…

Read Also: Ten Stocks Unlikely To Survive 2012

Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) has seen almost everything that could go wrong come its way.  The bank cannot shake the Countrywide mortgage woes, it drove away customers with proposed new banking fees, and it has been under fire by more agencies and regulatory bodies than we can easily count.  The company can hardly get in a settlement that is ultimately not challenged by an outside force. It does not seem like it will get to raise its dividend any time soon and the fear is that perhaps it will need to raise more capital on 2012 stress tests.  This was the worst performing stock out of all 30 DJIA components and not even a Warren Buffett investment managed to keep the stock from falling.  So what if it half of book value now.

Diamond Foods, Inc. (NASDAQ: DMND) became a sample of what can go wrong at a high growth food company.  Eventually the growth peaks and valuations come crashing down.  To go from a growing almond and nut products story to a company buying Pringles did not make sense to many, particularly since Diamond was going to be leveraging itself to make the deal.  Then came the accounting woes around payments to walnut farmers, and that was then followed by a director’s suicide who was inside the accounting woes story.  This was a great story that became very cloudy, just like if I poured a glass of their almond milk that I like so much to try to see through it. After running from about $50 to over $95, shares are now in the low $30-range and shares hit a low of $26.11 recently.  They could have found a rat in the milk vats and survived better than the way things turned out for them in 2011.

First Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) went from the U.S.’s solar sector poster boy to perhaps the worst performing S&P 500 stock.  It is still the leader of the solar sector and that is why this one precedes all other solar stock implosions of 2011.  Its CEO resignation or firing came in a rather strange and sudden manner and its prospects do not look much better on the margin front for the next year.  Solar panel dumping by Chinese firms and the negative press of the government backing of the failed Solyndra only added to the fears here as short sellers were able to make a fortune here.  Shares closed out 2010 around $130 and shares went briefly north of $175 in February.  Shares are now around $33.00.  First Solar single-handedly turned many 401/K plans into 201/K plans in 2011.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR) is one implosion which we debated whether or not should be part of a complaint for the full year.  Its accounting concerns were actually from 2010 and despite the massive share price drop the stock is actually still up for the year.  In fact, shares closed at $32.86 in 2010 and now the stock is around $46.00.  What is so bad is that the stock had been one of the best performing stocks as recently as September and the year high is above $115 for the stock.  Its growth has peaked, its advertising costs are way up, and Starbucks seems to have scored the better end of the deal between the two coffee companies. Because the stock is still up almost 50% for the year, we’ll back off.

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) may have started its woes in 2010 after firing Mark Hurd and then hiring Leo Apotheker, the former head of SAP. Still, the baffled decision to even go along with Leo Apotheker’s decision to jettison the PC business was just too much.  And now the decision to keep the PC business seems like it is because the cost of exiting it is just too high.  Palm is now dead too.  The Apotheker decision to acquire the enterprise software outfit Autonomy for $10 billion.  If you overlay a one-year chart as you can see here, you would think that H-P was a bank because its stock tracked the negative performance of Bank of America almost in unison until September.  The verdict is out on whether or not Meg Whitman is right fit here, but frankly the stock has stabilized since she took over.  H-P shares closed out 2010 at an adjusted $41.48 and shares are now close to $26.00 after hitting a low of $21.50.

Imperial Sugar Co. (NASDAQ: IPSU) was looking a lot like a transformation in the making from a sugar company to a sweetener company looking to branch out into new growth markets.  The company even went on a roadshow and got on CNBC to tell its story.  Shares even went from roughly $10 to $25 based upon the hype.  Then over the summer came news of a wider loss and things have slid further from there.  Sadly, it seems that management may have known things were not great when the story changed abruptly and there are class action suits.  Now shares are around $3.50.  This feels like getting drunk at the casino and losing your life savings with the dealers telling you “Thanks for playing.”

iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) was supposed to be a leveraged move on gold.  After all, if you can’t afford to buy gold, silver makes plenty of sense to buy for the common man.  Well, it turns out that silver’s nickname of “The Devils’ Metal” was more true than anyone could imagine.  Gold’s still turned in gains in 2011 but the chart is broken and for now traders and investors are flocking to dollars rather than endless paying up for gold.  Silver was about to challenge $50.00 per ounce earlier this year at the peak of the craze and the iShares Silver Trust went briefly above $48… Now shares are under $28.00 and silver itself is around $28.00.  Silver steam-rolled more speculators than gold as the April peak went from $48 and change down to under $35 in just a few trading sessions.  Another flush down in September went from $40 to about $30 in a few days too.  There is an old saying about sleeping with the devil that is not fit for a financial news site to publish, but don’t forget that it is called “The Devil’s Metal.”

K-V Pharmaceutical Company (NYSE: KV-A) needs to allow shareholders to tar and feather the management team.  The company secured the exclusive rights to a drug called Makena to prevent premature births and the stock rose exponentially from under $2.00 to above $13.00 in just a couple of months.  If this was not corporate greed then what the hell is?  I mean, REALLY?  Makena used to cost about $15 and then the company decided to charge somewhere around $1,500 for the same thing.  What part of gouging did management misinterpret here?  We warned of a deep political backlash against the company back in March after this corporate blunder when the stock was at $11.99, and now shares are under $1.50.  Honestly, this looks like management got drunk and daring in a poker game and started making bets about how far they could raise prices without anyone taking notice.

Read Also: The Dogs of the Dow in 2012

Market Vectors Egypt Index ETF (NYSE: EGPT) appears to have topped the list of bad country-focused ETFs in 2011.  After overthrowing the Egyptian regime, things have not turned around yet.  Businesses have remained very reluctant to go back into Egypt and during the revolution this traded like a closed-end fund because the Egyptian markets were closed. Shares closed out 2010 at $19.59 and went above $20.00 in January of 2011.  Now the ETF is closing out 2011 under $10.00.  Here is what is ironic: you cannot really blame the ETF management team here as they just followed their investment policy and even allowed it to trade when the Egyptian markets were closed entirely.

Molycorp, Inc. (NYSE: MCP) proved to be yet one more bubble, although we cannot truly blame management for the runaway valuations here.  This was induced by speculators and Wall Street analysts.  If you asked most investors in 2009 what a ‘rare-earth’ was, they might have said it was a round steak that was very pink on the inside.  The fortunes of this company ebb and flow with the whims of China’s exports of rare-earths to alternative energy players and manufacturers of electronics in many segments.  While the valuations have gone from red-hot to fair, we have determined that the efficient market theory cannot apply here.  Take J.P. Morgan’s research calls below:

• In February it raised the rating to Outperform from Neutral and raised the stock target to $65 or so from $36 when shares were about $44… then it raised the price target $74 from $66 at the end of March (when shares were around $55)…a nd then it raised the target to $90 from $74 only two weeks later (when shares were around $67). Shares peaked around $79 in early May and then fell out of bed.  Recently J.P. Morgan lowered the target and said it does not see any great prospects ahead.  Honestly, this feels like dot-come coverage from 1999 to 2001.

Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) went from hot to snot in 2011.  The major growth story was scuttled by the CEO after changing the pricing structure and also by splitting the online from physical delivery services.  Many pundits were just calling it overvalued and a story whose growth was behind it, but Reed Hastings made an extra effort here to derail this one.  Can the company go from an earnings growth story to a story trying to sell EBITDA?  Unlikely.  Any takeover would likely leave the bulk of the shareholders with too great of a loss for them to vote in favor of a deal.  Shares peaked at about $300 in the summer, and now shares are around $70 closing out 2011.

Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) has been the poster boy for how to kill a smartphone giant.  The loss here was about 75% for holders and the prospects ahead look no better as Samsung, Apple, and Google have put RIM potentially on the same path ahead. Shares are now under $15 and the catalyst for what can drive the shares higher is a pure mystery.  It certainly is not that tablet effort.  The co-CEO structure has been a disaster and the fact that these two are taking $1 a year in salary lets us say “It is one person and $1 too much!.”  It is way overdue in time for one of those CEOs (or maybe both) to lose a RIM job.

Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ: SHLD) has been a disaster in 2011, even if it has been a story about a disaster of decline for years.  But the retail sector gains elsewhere could almost be argued as being either at Sears’ expense or even because no one wanted to go to Sears or Kmart.  Bringing in CEO Lou D’Ambrosio was a huge mistake because the prior experience was not in retail.  For that matter, Eddie Lampert has proven that a highly successful hedge fund managing career does not translate into having a successful retail career.  Sears closed out 2010 above $70 and shares have been cut in more than half since then.  The only good news here, literally, is that borrowing Sears shares to short sell is very expensive and difficult.

Are there other bluders to consider?  Of course.  Bond king Bill Gross royally missed the boat in his short-Treasury Bonds call.  On the international front, Nokia Corporation (NYSE: NOK), Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE), and Veolia have all been classic disasters.

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