5-Star Stocks on the Upswing

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November 17, 2008 | Comments (2)

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Sadly, there's no such thing as an ultimate buy signal when it comes to investing in stocks. Identifying companies with the wind at their back takes time, patience, and a good dose of due diligence.

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Company	All-Stars Saying Outperform
EV Energy Partners (Nasdaq: EVEP )	184 of 191
CME Group (Nasdaq: CME )	640 of 683
SRA International (NYSE: SRX )	116 of 121
Veolia Environnement (NYSE: VE )	715 of 742
Talisman Energy (NYSE: TLM )	526 of 543
CRH PLC (NYSE: CRH )	177 of 186

Data from Motley Fool CAPS, Nov. 17, 2008.

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Disclosure is important to us here at The Motley Fool. No individual person selected the stocks in this article, so there is no author to disclose an interest in them. Since this article was automatically generated, it is possible that Motley Fool personnel (and even The Motley Fool itself, through our Million Dollar Portfolio and Ready Made Millionaire services), have positions in these stocks. We thought you'd like to know that. You can learn more about The Motley Fool’s disclosure policy here.

Read/Post Comments (2) | Recommend This Article (3)

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On January 14, 2009, at 10:12 AM, Sfisher61 wrote:

Is no one reading reports about SRA? The place is in meltdown mode. They haven't won a significant contract in months. They recently lost one of their best margin contracts because of service issues. They have not kept up with their acquisition strategy. Two recent acquisitions have not lived up to expectations and are driving results down instead of up. Their long-time CFO is leaving the company. They just announced the creation of the office of the Chairman significantly reducing the authority of the CEO (who has helped run the company into the ground). This new office of the chairman consists of the 75 year old founder, who hasn't been actively involved with the company for years; a recently promoted COO, who comes from one of the smaller business units; and the aforementioned CEO.
Report this Comment On April 13, 2010, at 4:45 PM, deemre wrote:

Hind sight is always better the fore sight but: The founder becoming much more involved was a clear strategic plus for SRA. He built the Company from scratch, and had only withdrawn from day to day operations for a couple of years. There is no dispute that the current CEO helped run the company into the ground and if one was inside-I was-he drove excellent mid level managers out of SRA in droves. The departing CFO was one horrible example but there were many others.
Now the good news:
The new CFO has been with the company for years, is widely respected witin the company, has proven skills and will/has reassured investors.
The founder's active management has done exactly the same. The "book" has been strengthened, new or repeat work won, and the company is back on track.
I look for SRA to continue its current growth as long as the founder can be this active, which one could expect to be 3-10 more years. At some point the company has to evolve new, effective leaderhip, which the curremt CEO is not. I do not look for the founder to sell the compay and he retains the controlling interest. As in all small companies which have grown from their founder's leadership to post founder success, that evolution is the challenge. I remember Ben and Jerry of Ben and Jerry's ice cream going through 3 CEOs until they found a CEO who could run their company. Let's hope for SRA's employess and stock holders that the transition for SRA is a lot smoother than this last effort. SRA has been through 2 CEOs-one still in place-since the founder orihginally retired so perhaps the 3rd will be lucky for SRA as it was for Ben and Jerries.

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