I am always looking for a good deal, whether that means buying an extra box of Golden Grahams when they're on sale or pouncing on undervalued stocks. The idea that anybody would sell a stock for less than its worth may seem silly, but legendary value investor Ben Graham (no relation to the cereal) tells us, by way of allegory, how we can look out for these situations.
In The Intelligent Investor, Graham introduces readers to a wacky chap named Mr. Market. Mr. Market's game is to pay you house calls on a daily basis to offer to sell you interests in businesses he owns or to buy from you interests in businesses you own. Sometimes Mr. Market will show up at your door very excited and offer you premium prices for your holdings, while at other times he'll be inconsolably depressed about the future and will offer to sell you what he has for as low as pennies on the dollar.
To find some of the stocks that Mr. Market is depressed about, I've turned once again to The Motley Fool's CAPS investor community. Each of the companies below had been given a five-star rating (the highest) by our community of investors just 30 days ago:
|
Stock
|
30-Day Return
|
One-Year Return
|
Current CAPS Rating
|
|
ReneSola (NYSE: SOL)
|
(35.0%)
|
(67.2%)
|
****
|
|
Titanium Metals (NYSE: TIE)
|
(29.1%)
|
(33.7%)
|
*****
|
|
Cemex (NYSE: CX)
|
(22.6%)
|
(65.3%)
|
*****
|
|
Apache
|
(20.4%)
|
(45.8%)
|
*****
|
|
Noble
|
(19.1%)
|
(50.8%)
|
*****
|
|
MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR)
|
(18.1%)
|
(71.0%)
|
****
|
|
Diana Shipping (NYSE: DSX)
|
(17.9%)
|
(48.1%)
|
*****
|
Data from Motley Fool CAPS as of July 8.
As the table shows, these stocks are all still very well-regarded by the CAPS community despite their underperformance over the past month. While these are not formal recommendations, they could be a great place to kick off further research. I'll even get you started with some thoughts on ReneSola.
Why so blue?
If you're guessing that ReneSola's shelf filing that will allow it to sell $100 million worth of new shares is what's been hurting the stock, then you're (surprisingly) wrong. While there would be good reason for investors to worry about the potentially painful watering down of their stock, the announcement didn't seem to touch the stock at all.
So what did cause ReneSola's stock to get clubbed like a baby seal? Well, it appears that investors have been concerned about the entire solar sector and have given everyone from ReneSola and MEMC to Suntech Power (NYSE: STP) and First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR) a bit of the ol' seal treatment lately.
Not that we should be all that shocked. The solar bloc seems to take cues from oil prices, and they've taken a substantial hit over the past month. The group also tends to be a few ticks more volatile than the rest of the market, and with investors seemingly re-evaluating stocks across all sectors lately, it makes sense that the sunshine crowd is leading the declines.
What the bulls say
I have a pretty good sense of where the bull's heads are at since I'm one of them and have given ReneSola a thumbs-up in my CAPS portfolio. I shared my two cents on CAPS early last month, essentially saying that I dig ReneSola because -- much like MEMC -- it's a supplier of silicon wafers to manufacturers like Suntech and JA Solar rather than focused on the cutthroat world of solar cell manufacturing itself.
With nearly 1,000 CAPS members positive on ReneSola, I'm hardly alone. Toward the end of 2008, CAPS All-Star pcstuck became a ReneSola bull and shared a positive outlook on the whole solar sector:
If your looking for a long term stock, i think the solar sector is going to be the way to go. It will take a hit now in the short-term with economic struggles, but i dont think you can deny the growth potential here. The higher risk could lead to a nice reward if you stick it out.
But here's the important question: Do you think the recent drop has created a good buying opportunity? Or does the stock need to cool off further? Head over to CAPS and share your thoughts with the 135,000 other community members. Even if you'd prefer to pass on ReneSola, you can check out a couple of the other stocks listed above or any of the 5,300 stocks that are rated on CAPS.
More CAPS Foolishness:
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