10 Stocks to Shake the Market

In music they're called one-hit wonders, singers who belt out tunes but are never able to regain the magic of their big hit song. Think Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" or Brownsville Station's "Smokin' in the Boys Room." Monster hits never to be repeated.

We have seen similar one-hit wonders in stocks, too, like Pets.com or drkoop.com. Companies that burst on the scene -- many during the tech bubble heyday -- never to live up to the promise they held.

Whole lotta shakin' going on
While nostalgia's fun, "10 Stocks to Shake the Market" isn't about finding stocks that can't repeat their success; it's about looking at those that have made big moves and are likely to continue doing so.

To do that, we're looking at 10 stocks that made some of the biggest moves up over the past month. We'll then pair them with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. Those with high ratings have CAPS members believing they'll continue to outperform the market.

In the first 20 months since we first began tracking the collective intelligence at CAPS in late 2006, the data shows that newly minted five-star stocks offer the best opportunities for investors, while the lowest-rated companies fared the worst. Four-star stocks outperformed the market by seven percentage points, and five-star stocks -- top honors in CAPS -- did even better.

With only a few of these stocks carrying even a three star rating, let's see what the CAPS community thinks about their recent advance.

DryShips
It's not the first time DryShips CEO George Economou has riled investors. A few years ago, he derided American investors as "the dumbest investors around," and late last year opted to venture into oil drilling without any advance notice to the public. Then, just a few short months ago, he announced he was going to purchase nine vessels owned by his privately held company, Cardiff Marine. At the time, DryShips shares were flying high, so the stock deal seemed very expensive. Now that shares have dropped, however, Economou said in an interview that he expects to cancel the deal. As he said in a Forbes interview, "If you don't like it, you don't have to be here. Sell the stock."

It was on the basis of the management integrity issues that CAPS member noexperience suggested back in October that DryShips was in for some stormy weather:

On the face of it this company has everything I love, deep value, deep pessimism, etc, but I am giving it a thumbs down because [the] management overrides deep value in the long run:

There is so much value out there at the moment there is no need to waste capital on suspect players that view the equity markets as an easy mark (which we are).

CIT Group
Grasping at a lifeline tossed by the TARP bailout fund, CIT Group changed to a bank holding company and won access to $2.3 billion in government money in exchange for a preferred equity stake. CAPS member DrDinoTX thinks the commercial lender is now well positioned to capitalize on its middle market target audience:

This company has little exposure to the housing market (the sold their mortage assets several months ago). They are great position going forward as they are back to focusing on their core business (lending to middle market business).

Shake, rattle, and roll
With these stocks shaking the market this past month, it pays to start your own research on them at Motley Fool CAPS. 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.

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