The Best Stocks Right Now

It has been 19 months since we began tracking "The Best Stocks Right Now" with Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's free online investing community. Amazingly, our CAPS community has quintupled since that January, now encompassing more than 110,000 members.

We've highlighted some winners in that time, including Canadian Natural Resources and Superior Energy (NYSE: SPN), which have risen 41% and 29%, respectively, in the year since they appeared.

Back to the present
Since that article appeared last July, the market has had a rough-and-tumble time of it, to say the least. The subprime crisis and credit crunch continue to wreak havoc on mortgage-related companies such as Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE).

Things may appear bleak, but as Mr. Cramer says, there's always a bull market somewhere. In unsure markets like this, however, the bulls can be more difficult to find. That's where CAPS can help. CAPS members rate stocks to either outperform or underperform the market, and the players themselves are rated based on their performance.

Here's this month's list of the top-rated five-star stocks on CAPS.

Company	Market Capitalization
Naspers	$8.0 billion
Williams Pipeline Partners (NYSE: WMZ)	$556 million
Quidel (Nasdaq: QDEL)	$609 million
Petrobras A shares (NYSE: PBR-A)	$273 billion
National Western Life Insurance (Nasdaq: NWLIA)	$703 million

Data from Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poor's; Yahoo! Finance; and Motley Fool CAPS as of July 14.

Please bear in mind that these are not formal recommendations. Instead, I offer this list as a jumping-off point for further research. In fact, researching five-star CAPS stocks such as these has proved to be an effective tool for investors.

Learn what CAPS members are saying about certain stocks by heading to its CAPS page. If you'd like to voice your opinion about these -- or any other stocks, for that matter -- join the Motley Fool CAPS community now and make your voice heard.