I am always looking for a good deal, whether that means buying an extra box of Coco Puffs when they're on sale or pouncing on undervalued stocks. The idea that anybody would sell a stock for less than its worth may seem silly, but legendary value investor Ben Graham tells us, by way of allegory, how we can look out for these situations.
In The Intelligent Investor, Graham introduces readers to a wacky guy named Mr. Market. Mr. Market's game is to pay you house calls on a daily basis to offer to sell you interests in businesses he owns or to buy from you interests in businesses you own. Sometimes Mr. Market will show up at your door very excited and offer you premium prices for your holdings; other times he'll be totally depressed about the future and will offer to sell you what he has for pennies on the dollar.
So to find some of the stocks that Mr. Market is depressed about, I've turned once again to The Motley Fool's CAPS investor community. Each of the companies below had been given a five-star rating (the highest) by our community of investors just 30 days ago:
|
Stock |
30-Day Return |
One-Year Return |
Current CAPS Rating (out of 5) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Trinity Industries |
(29.8%) |
(28.3%) |
***** |
|
Aluminum Corp. of China |
(28.6%) |
202.2% |
**** |
|
Excel Maritime |
(25.6%) |
291.4% |
**** |
|
Garmin |
(24.5%) |
87.6% |
**** |
|
Itron |
(24.2%) |
56.1% |
**** |
|
Bolt Technology |
(23.5%) |
91.1% |
***** |
|
Ceragon Networks |
(23.1%) |
128.6% |
***** |
As the table shows, these stocks are all still very well-regarded by the CAPS community, despite their underperformance over the past month. While these are not formal recommendations, they could be a great place to kick off some further research. I'll even get you started with thoughts on Garmin.
Which direction for Garmin?
There likely aren't too many people out there who aren't familiar with Garmin and its products. With its monster returns over the past few years, most investors are probably familiar with the Garmin story, too.
While there is certainly no dearth of great companies down significantly over the past couple of weeks, Garmin is one that probably has had a good number of investors on the sidelines during the year, just waiting for a good buying opportunity. This is a well-run company in a fast-growing industry that has continued to deliver. Unfortunately, these are also the kinds of stocks that can end up with valuations that go a little too far -- and Garmin has been pretty darn hot all year. Using the P/E as just a quick metric, at the recent peak, Garmin's P/E was a bit over 37, more than 40% higher than rival TomTom's at its recent peak.
On CAPS, All-Star Bubba150 emphatically recommended Garmin after the recent drop, writing,
Garmin is cheap again. They announce the $4 billion dollar [T]ele [A]tlas deal and all [of a] sudden lose $6 billion in market cap. I don't get it! Garmin will be a stronger company after the merger and TomTom will be weaker. Buy Garmin!
So has the recent drop created a good buying opportunity? Or is there more downside ahead for the stock? Let the community know what you think -- head over to CAPS and share your thoughts with the other 74,000-plus players that are currently part of the community. Even if you'd prefer to pass on Garmin, you can check out a couple of the other stocks listed above or any of the 5,000 stocks that are rated on CAPS.
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