Despite enjoying a nice 'Trump' and 'Santa' rally for most of December, 2016 has nonetheless been an extremely volatile year for share market investors.
Unsurprisingly, a number of very popular shares have been hit pretty hard over the course of the year as they failed to live up to market expectations.
Since I highlighted some of the best performing shares yesterday, I thought it would only be fair to highlight some of 2016's biggest losers today.
Here they are:
| Company | Market Capitalisation | 2016 Return | P/E Ratio | Dividend Yield |
| $90 million | -83.8% | – | – | |
| $80.2 million | -74% | – | – | |
| $82.8 million | -71.5% | – | – | |
| $132 million | -67.9% | – | – | |
| $68.6 million | -66.5% | 81.4 | – | |
| $825 million | -64% | 15.7 | 2.0% | |
| $88.9 million | -62.7% | – | – | |
| $129 million | -61.6% | 6.1 | 3.9% | |
| $190 million | -60.8% | 4.8 | 8.0% | |
| $66.4 million | -60.5% | 12.7 | – | |
| $587 million | -60.4% | 10.1 | 9.4% | |
| $137 million | -58.5% | 12.4 | – | |
| $236 million | -56% | 7.3 | 12.2% | |
| $67.9 million | -53.6% | 11.9 | – | |
| $117 million | -50.5% | 9.2 | 5.2% |
While this is a pretty sorry looking list of shares, it does highlight the importance of diversification when it comes to investing in the share market.
Although it is nearly impossible to avoid owning one or two losers each year, a well diversified portfolio will ultimately help you to limit your downside risk should a particular share lose 30%, 40% or 50% — sometimes in a single day.
In any case, shareholders who own any of those shares today must ask themselves if the shares are likely to make a meaningful recovery or are there better options elsewhere?
Personally, I wouldn't be rushing out to buy any of those shares right now as there does not appear to be an easy path to recovery for any of them.
With that said, Sirtex Medical, Mobile Embrace and Touchcorp remain good candidates as 'turnaround plays' and I would happily keep them on my list of shares to watch in 2017.
