10 Stocks To Shake the Market

• Email
• Share
• Print

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. Some companies burst on the scene -- many during the tech bubble heyday -- but never lived 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 that with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. Those that rate higher suggest the members believe they'll continue to move higher in the future and 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.

Stock	30-Day Change	CAPS Rating
NovaGold Resources (AMEX: NG)	300.00%	****
DryShips	191.58%	**
ProLogis	191.19%	**
Jaguar Mining	144.62%	*****
Genco Shipping (NYSE: GNK)	137.20%	****
Excel Maritime (NYSE: EXM)	133.78%	****
James River Coal (Nasdaq: JRCC)	133.42%	**
Palm (Nasdaq: PALM)	128.87%	*
Teck Cominco (NYSE: TCK)	121.43%	*****
Dennison Mines (AMEX: DNN)	107.55%	****

With more than half of the stocks carrying a four-star or better rating, let's see why the CAPS community thinks even some of the lesser lights might outperform the market.

Excel Maritime
It looks like it's full steam ahead for the shipping industry these days. Our list is populated by a number of them, including Excel Maritime and DryShips. The Baltic Dry Index, which measures the general shipping costs for commodities, may have bottomed out last month, thus signaling a rebound for an industry that has been pummeled since the summer.

Top-rated CAPS All-Star member trexmoney thinks the industry will quickly rebound this year and that Excel Maritime, as one of the best in the business, will lead the phalanx of shippers ahead:

Shippers will rebound so fast and hard. All the global infrastructure money that the governments are throwing around will require huge amounts of raw materials to be moved. The Baltic index has been ticking up for the last month, it hit is lows and it should have a nice recovery into 09. ... I like almost all the Shippers but I think [Excel Maritime] is one of the best of breed.

Palm
Please, please, please be a big hit! Or so you can imagine Palm developers praying when they release their smartphone this week. Whether it becomes an iPhone-killer remains to be seen, but there's certainly a lot riding on its launch. CAPS All-Star Tastylunch doesn't hold out much hope for Palm's survival considering the level of competition and the lack of consumer demand:

Palm got a 100 million from Elevation. On one hand that's good because clearly they need cash badly one the other it's bad because it's heavily dilutive to common shareholders and it probably shows they intend to burn through tens of millions of dollars per quarter next year as they have lately. At any rate Palm faces a tough road ahead, tough competition and a weka consumer environment don't bode well for the stock.

Shake, rattle, and roll
With these 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.

On Jan. 12, 2009, Fool co-founder David Gardner, Jeff Fischer, and their Motley Fool Pro team will accept new subscribers to their real-money portfolio service. Motley Fool Pro is investing $1 million of the Fool’s own money in long and short positions in a range of securities, including common stocks, put and call options, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). They also incorporate proprietary CAPS "community intelligence" data into their research. To learn more about Motley Fool Pro, and to receive a private invitation to join, simply enter your email address in the box below.