Tomorrow's Monster Stocks?

Stocks that climb to 10 times their original price are a rare breed -- but they're not impossible to find. Especially when you have Fools for friends.

The market's best stocks include companies that have risen tens of times in value over the past decade. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies that have sound business prospects and achieve phenomenal returns every year. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful companies can help you establish a winning portfolio.

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's monster stocks, we'll enlist the 86,000 investors at Motley Fool CAPS. We've compiled a list of the most successful CAPS players, dubbed All-Stars, whose picks have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in price. Then we've plucked out some of their recent picks for stocks they find equally promising.

Of course, this is not a list of stocks to buy -- or, for those monster stocks that our CAPS All-Stars have already found, to sell. Just consider them starting points for your own further research.

Steely-eyed determination
Sometimes, outsized demand can be a dual-edged sword. Although a company can raise its prices and enjoy higher profits for a while, the same situation can also lead to rising costs as more companies vie for limited resources. That can have an impact on margins. Steel, for example, is one of those industries that's profited handsomely from the pent-up demand for the metal in growing economies such as China and India. Yet although many steel companies have enjoyed growing profits as a result -- and share prices that raced ahead, too -- they're also feeling the pinch of increasing costs for iron ore and coke supplies.

Not everyone in the industry is similarly affected, however. According to a recent story in Gypsum Today, U.S. Steel may be somewhat insulated from those surging costs as a result of having its own supplies of raw materials. But with some slackening demand, inventories have risen, and the stock has felt the cold steel blade of the market cutting shares earlier this year.

More than 500 investors have weighed in on the metals company, and nearly 90% think it has a molten bead on outperforming the market. Shares have recovered from their slide and trade at the levels they were at before the earnings report. Undoubtedly, many investors agree with CAPS player stdbrown that China is still going to need more steel and that there will be other developing countries "coming to the party." 

Others, such as CAPS All-Star verylargelarry, with a 97.52 player rating, see U.S. Steel's position as a vertically integrated company, a trait that puts it ahead of the competition.

[It's] elemental, really. If you own a steel mill you're in a sweet spot of exploding demand, likely for an extended period of time. Demand for steel is exploding. Problem is, so are the raw material costs for these producers. Your money should be in [U.S. Steel] because they, unlike most all of its competitors, own an enormous iron ore deposit.

Does a looming recession here at home make an investment in US Steel risky, as CAPS investor sandiegoteacher suggests? Some will argue that with the so-called BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- still growing, heavy industries exposed to their economies are protected from the hard reality of an economic malaise.

A chance for scary growth
Now's the opportunity for you to weigh in on US Steel or any of the other stocks these All-Stars see as achieving monster growth. Agree with their views? Tell us on CAPS. If you don't agree, let us know that, too! If you've got an opinion, then this is the place where your voice counts just as much as everyone else's. Let's hear whether you think these are tomorrow's monster stocks that have been uncovered today.