3 Stocks Hitting High Notes

Stocks hitting fresh highs can either signal that a stock is on its way to greatness or that it has run its course. Even with the risk of the latter, searching for these outperformers can reveal companies that are doing something right, much to their investors' delight.

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With that in mind, we'll use the aggregate intelligence of the 110,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS to find stocks hitting 52-week highs today. The community's approval (those with four- and five-star ratings) could be a sign that further research is in order.

Here are three such stocks:

	Today's High	Industry	CAPS Rating	Fools Saying Outperform	Research
Barr Pharmaceuticals (NYSE: BRL)	$64.21	Drugs	*****	828 of 862	Research
IBM (NYSE: IBM)	$130.00	Computer hardware	***	2305 of 2623	Research
Genentech (NYSE: DNA)	$82.50	Drugs	*****	1753 of 1838	Research

Source: Motley Fool CAPS, as of July 18, 2008.

Other five-star drug companies

• Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) -- stock price is 17.3% cheaper than a year ago.
• Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) -- up 41.2% in the past year.

Five-star computer hardware companies

• Secure Computing (Nasdaq: SCUR) -- stock price is 53.7% cheaper than a year ago.
• Telvent Git, S.A. (Nasdaq: TLVT) -- stock price is 11.7% cheaper than a year ago.