4 stocks tanking on the ASX today

The ASX 200 recovers to be up 0.2% in afternoon trading, but these four have crashed down

Mike King

Mike King is a Fool.com.au Investment Analyst and Writer. He caught the investing bug more than a decade ago, at a time when the U.S. had invaded Iraq and fear reigned in the markets. His initial success as the markets took off encouraged his passion and thirst for knowledge. With 13 years behind him at one of Australia's largest domestic banks, Mike's passion for stocks led him to join a boutique funds management firm, where he stayed for four years. A seven-year stint in equity research at one of the largest investment banks in the world followed that, giving Mike a thirst to pursue his passion further. Mike holds a Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and a Graduate Certificate in Financial Planning. His passion is to help retail investors invest better, and that passion was one of his primary reasons for joining The Motley Fool Australia in late 2011. Mike has written thousands of articles since joining, including for Fairfax Media, Yahoo!7, Ninemsn and has also appeared on ABC's The Business. You can see all of Mikes' holdings here

Published September 30, 2014 1:15 pm AEST

The S&P / ASX 200 Index (Index: ^AXJO) (ASX: XJO) is recovering to be 0.2% today, with the top 20 stocks by market cap showing mixed results.

Since January 2014, the index is down 1.5%, and if the recent trend continues, we are headed for a negative year of returns.

Still, some investors will be very happy they don't hold any of the following stocks, which are all down heavily today.

Lamboo Resources Ltd (ASX: LMB) has lost a further 14% today falling to 39.5 cents, and is now down more than 33% since last Wednesday. Last week, Lamboo was forced to retract a scoping study on its McIntosh graphite project in Western Australia, with regulators suggesting the forecast results may not have a reasonable basis. No-one's ever convicted a miner of being too conservative!

iBuy Group Ltd (ASX: IBY) has seen its shares fall 10.4% to 21.5 cents in lunchtime trading. The owner of several flash sale websites across Asia has now lost 35% of its value since the start of this year. iBuy specialises in selling excess, remnant, obsolete or out of season products at very cheap prices and in the latest half year, turned over almost as much as it did in the whole of 2013. Still yet to make a profit, investors have turned negative on the company, but iBuy may warrant a place on your watchlist.

Netcomm Wireless Ltd (ASX: NTC) is transitioning its business away from consumer based technologies such as routers and modems towards the global Machine to Machine (M2M) market, and could be one of the big beneficiaries of the Internet of Things. One area Netcomm is focused on is smart meters for utility companies. Shares are down 8.2% today, with investors likely finding something they didn't like in the annual report, released yesterday.

McAleese Ltd (ASX: MCS) has dropped to 41.5 cents, down 7.8% despite no recent company announcements and 73% since listing in November 2013. A fatal truck crash, loss of haulage contracts, a restructure, exposure to the sliding iron ore price and the subsequent profit downgrades make McAleese perhaps the worst performing IPO in recent times.

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