consider only the 3 worst stocks?

If these were your items:

apple rating=1
ibm rating=1
microsoft rating=2
alibaba rating =2
google rating=2
yahoo rating=3

Which would be the worst 3?

See if this will get you started. I used a helper column in C...

	A	B	C
2	apple	1	1
3	ibm	2	2
4	microsoft	2	3
5	alibaba	3	4
6	google	3	5
7	yahoo	4	6
8
9	apple	1
10	ibm	2
11	microsoft	3

C2=RANK(B2,$B$2:$B$7,1)+COUNTIF(B$2:B2,B2)-1
copied down. This will give you each stock's ranking

Then...
A9=INDEX($A$2:$A$7,MATCH(ROW(A1),$C$2:$C$7,0))
B9=SMALL($C$2:$C$7,ROW(A1))
both copied down as needed

Have you considered Tony's question - or is that not a an issue for you? It will affect the n-worst and n-1 worst stocks, with n being 3 or 30 or whatever you choose as the amount you want to see

OK cool, thanks for the feedback