Tomorrow's Monster Stock?

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 that have sound business prospects and achieve phenomenal returns every year. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful companies can help you establish a winning portfolio.

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's winners, we've enlisted the help of more than 135,000 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 extreme buying opportunities.

In search of Bigfoot
The Department of Energy is gearing up to hand out tens of millions of dollars in stimulus spending for alternative energy, and standing in line is geothermal energy, which will receive $350 million. Raser Technologies could be the recipient of some of that largesse. The company says it was notified by DOE that its expansion project qualifies for taxpayer-backed loans of as much as $150 million.

Raser still has to go through the approval process, though. Meanwhile, investors got a little steamed when the geothermal-plant operator said it raised $25.5 million in a direct offering to institutional investors, with most of the proceeds going to fund day-to-day operations rather than build more plants. Shares have been sent into a tailspin, with the stock dropping by 45% over the past month.

Whether this company amounts to little more than a pump-and-dump scheme or has a viable alternative-energy technology has placed it in the crosshairs. Indeed, the CAPS community itself is almost evenly divided, with just 51% of those rating the company believing it will outperform the market. However, when it comes to CAPS' best-rated All-Star members, nearly three-quarters think it will underperform.

CAPS member jfsoroka is one of those who sees Raser's alt-energy plans giving it a shot to beat the market. Similarly, scuby22 says that sometimes you need to look past the numbers a company is posting to get to the underlying potential.

Sometimes you can't just look at the numbers. They only have two business models and both are at the forefront of energy solutions for the U.S. Real energy solutions, right now, creating real jobs. I think they will receive gov't backing which will create a base for the autos to start. They have the only green energy that can baseload. Everything else, Solar, Wind, etc. is inconsistent.

It's been a difficult month for the companies making up CAPS' Alternative Energy sector. They've traded sideways for much of the month, while the S&P 500 increased 2%. But they've done decidedly better than Raser Technologies. As the alt-energy companies on CAPS have lost about half of their value over the past 12 months, Raser has fallen by 80%.

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick paragraph 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.