Tomorrow's Monster Stocks

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

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

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's winners, we'll enlist the 125,000 monster-trackers at Motley Fool CAPS. We've compiled a list of the most successful CAPS members, 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, sell. Just consider them starting points for your own further research of what could be extreme buying opportunities.

In search of Bigfoot
With January crude oil contracts falling below $33 a barrel for the first time in four years, pessimism runs high that further exploration will be depressed. Foolish colleague Toby Shute has laid out a credible scenario for problems to begin mounting at the likes of National Oilwell Varco (NYSE:NOV), yet he remains confident that top-tier drillers like Transocean will not feel the pinch so much. Standard & Poor's seems to concur, because it upgraded the deepwater driller's debt recently to stable, on the basis of its large fleet, high contract revenue backlog, and an improving free cash flow situation.

CAPS member Alwaysgolong led the chorus of cheerleaders earlier this month, pointing out that Transocean's industry-leading position will allow it to aggressively negotiate better lease rates:

This monster is the King Daddy of them all. The biggest go anywhere, do anything rigs in the world. Deepwater Priority is coming and Transocean is leading the way. They know it and are showing some arrogance, A GOOD THING, which should negotiate BETTER rates for them.

Just say "No" to diversity
While the IT industry is expected to face some tough times in the immediate future, leading players like Infosys Technologies (NASDAQ:INFY) are sticking to their knitting to weather the storm. Satyam Computer Services, on the other hand, sought to diversify its core business by entering into real estate and infrastructure development. Not a good idea.

The backlash that the move generated -- particularly because it was using up its entire cash position to buy two companies operated by its chairman's sons -- caused Satyam to backpedal quickly and drop the idea. Shares that had dropped more than 50% on the news did recover some of their losses, but still trade a third lower than they did before the announcement.

Top-rated CAPS All-Star BravoBevo sees opportunity in the reaction. While acknowledging the concerns the maneuver raised about corporate governance at the IT specialist, this investor said the company has learned its lesson and will eventually recover:

We'll see if Satyam can get back to business as normal, but at least it caved to investor sentiment by canceling its plan to buy privately held businesses owned by Satyam's Chairman. He would have had Satyam enter India's depressed construction industry by buying privately held Maytas Properties for $1.3 billion and by buying 51% of builder Maytas Infra for $300 million. Analysts dissed the plan, which comes at a time when its industry competitors are preserving cash to cope with slowing sales expected from a worldwide recession, and questioned the motives of Satyam's top management. Although the incident has raised red flags about the corporate governance of Indian companies, Satyam seems to have learned its lesson. If Satyam proves that it will stick to its core business of technology outsourcing, I expect the stock price of this ADR to pop back to its previous level.

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick paragraph or two to make buy or sell decisions, so start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. You can read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page. And while you're there, weigh in with your own thoughts on whether you think these are tomorrow's monster stocks.

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