From The Reformed Broker:

... Anyone who tells you this is a stockpicker's market should probably be in a hospital gown and under observation. The key to this market has nothing to do with discounted cash flow analysis and everything to do with risk-on, risk-off macro-driven shenanigans. Picking stocks in this market is like comparing snowflakes in an avalanche – pretending otherwise is rank stupidity or deliberate disingenuousness.

And no one lost you more money this year than fundamental sell-side analysts "covering" the bank sector. Oh my god. Bank of America is down like 70% this year, and the rest of them have all been proportionately slaughtered. In the sell-side brokerage research world, the term "covering a sector" sometimes means trying to find the name that's the least bad so they have something to pitch to clients.

And none of the sell-side fundamental analysts covering the bank sector has lost you more money than Dick Bove of Rochdale Securities. This guy was on television everywhere you looked all year (thanks to his media connections, not his track record or the timeliness of his calls). Bove was telling you to buy BofA and Citi, dismiss the bearish economic arguments, treat MF Global's sell-off as "overblown" and get long Jefferies as a takeover target. No other bank analyst had more face time in 2011 and no other bank analyst did more damage to the knife-catching public.

But Dick has found a flaw. Actually, he's found four of them. Four reasons why his bank stock recs haven't panned out...

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More on financials:

Why the big banks are plummeting again

How the U.S. became a nation of debt slaves

The U.S. stocks Warren Buffett recommends buying now