This past weekend, we took a look at the year’s best-performing stocks. Today, we take a look at those that underperformed in a big way. Will any of these stocks rebound in 2020 or is investing in these laggards akin to catching a falling knife?

For today’s list, we are limiting our screen to those which had a market cap of at least $500 million to start the year.

The worst-performing small cap

If you have been following the cannabis sector in any way, you would not be surprised that one of this year’s biggest losers is a pot stock. It also won’t surprise you that CannTrust Holdings (TSX:TRST)(NYSE:CTST) is the industry’s biggest disappointment. Once one of the most respected brands in the industry, CannTrust was caught with illegal growing operations.

Along with several other missteps along the way, CannTrust had its production and sales licences revoked by the government. The end result is a significant fall from grace for a once promising cannabis upstart….CLICK for complete article

The United States has a total area of 3,796,742 square miles. That makes it the third or fourth-largest country in the world by land area, depending if you count overseas territories. So what’s the point? Despite its size, the U.S. is facing a dilemma of sorts. According to a new report from The Brookings Institution, regional divergence in the U.S. innovation sector “has reached extreme levels.” The innovation sector, composed of 13 of the nation’s highest-tech, highest R&D industries, is vital to the U.S. economy. The innovation sector accounts for 3% of U.S. jobs, but generates 6% of the country’s GDP, a quarter of its exports and two-thirds of business R&D expenditures. The industries, such as software, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, consist of workers with degrees such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The report found that job gains in the innovation sector are becoming highly concentrated to a handful of “superstar” metropolitan areas. Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and San Diego captured more than 90% of all new jobs in the innovation sector from 2005 to 2017. These cities’ share of the nation’s innovation sector employment increased from 17.6% to 22.8% during this period.

One-third of the nation’s innovation sector jobs are now in just 16 counties, with more than half concentrated in 41 counties. The hardest hit cities, in terms of losing innovation sector jobs over this period, include Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and Los Angeles.

The report discusses some of the negative externalities as a result of innovation sector jobs clustering to a few cities. The most obvious is housing. A separate report from PropertyShark found that California is home to 73% of the nation’s priciest zip codes. The Bay Area alone is home to 55 of the nation’s 125 most expensive zip codes….CLICK for complete article

Technical traders are always looking for signals that a stock could be due for a change in direction. Given that stocks rarely move in one direction for too long without periodic retracements, a stock that has endured heavy selling pressure and has become “oversold” may be a potential buying opportunity.

RSI Explained

One of the most popular metrics for determining whether a stock is overbought is relative strength index, or RSI. RSI is an oscillator that fluctuates from 0 to 100 based on the magnitude of recent price changes in a stock. RSI can be calculated on any number of different time periods, but the typical period is 14 days.

The formula for calculating RSI is RSI = 100 – [100/1+(average gain/average loss)]. However, all traders need to know is that the lower the RSI, the more oversold a stock is. The higher the RSI the more overbought a stock is considered to be. Typically, traders use 30 (oversold) and 70 (overbought) as potential buy or sell signals.

A stock with an RSI under 30 is a candidate for a technical bounce, at least in the short term….CLICK for complete article