5 Dogs of 2011 With Hope for Better in 2012

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tdp2664 InvestorPlace If every dog has its day, these stocks are overdue. With the help of Capital IQ, we looked at the S&P 500′s 10 worst performers year-to-date as of Dec. 8. We then got rid of stocks where analysts saw no nope of a rebound. Then we cut the list further by keeping only those companies where analysts are forecasting a share price gain by at least 25% over the next year. That left us with five dogs of 2011 that could have their day in 2012. Each company on our list has good reason for its stock’s precipitous decline this year, but there’s also reason to hope for a rebound in 2012. This group, like our recent picks of top performers of 2011 that may rise again in 2012 , is surprisingly diverse — featuring financial service and cable-TV companies along with Netflix, which is ending 2011 as everyone's favorite corporate punching bag. Here’s the list, ranked in descending order of potential upside. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC ) 2011 decline: 58.1% Recent trade: $5.34 Average one-year price target: $9.72 Potential upside: 82% What went wrong? For the Charlotte, N.C.-based financial services firm, the answer is pretty much everything. It lost its ranking as the largest bank by assets to JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM ) and continued to be mired in the mortgage mess it created for itself through its 2008 acquisition of Countrywide. BofA swung to a profit in the third quarter largely due to an accounting gain and the pretax benefits it earned by selling its interest in a Chinese bank. In November, the company announced plans to slash 30,000 workers over the next few years in a bid to save $5 billion annually.