Monday's Biggest Stock Stars

Hey there, Fools. I've summoned our Motley Fool CAPS community once again to highlight a few of Monday's biggest winners among the stocks with top ratings of four or five stars:

There's a reason I selected those notable gainers, as opposed to other winners making noise on Monday, like low-rated Motorola (NYSE:MOT). Stocks go up all the time, but unless you were able to predict the pop, what does it matter?  

Our community of more than 150,000 CAPS Fools considers its high-star stocks the most likely to outperform the market.

Written in the (five) stars?
For example, 96.2% of the 1,363 members who've rated Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection Hasbro have a bullish opinion of the stock. Late last year, one of those Fools, daniel5724, tapped the toy maker as a particularly fun way to profit:

They have some good franchises they are finally capitalizing on and should feed into future profits. A third installment of Transformers and a sequel to GI Joe is in development. Both are 100 million blockbusters and the merchandising will reward the investors that are patient for at least two to three years.

Shares of Hasbro are up over 22% since that call. In fact, yesterday's double-digit pop came after the company's quarterly results easily topped Wall Street estimates on strong sales of its Transformers and G.I. Joe toys -- not to mention Nerf toys -- consistent with daniel5724's bullishness.

The bullish lesson?
The simplest reasons to buy a stock are often all you need to make money. As CAPS' daniel5724 understands, when a company owns such wildly popular brands as Hasbro does and is available at a reasonable price, it's really not necessary to overthink the investment. Like Peter Lynch reminds us, "Never invest in any idea you cannot illustrate with a crayon."

And now for the losers ...
Of course, winning isn't everything in the stock market.

Here are five of Monday's biggest decliners with one- or two-star ratings:   

While yesterday's drop in highly rated Yamana Gold (NYSE:AUY) may have caught our community off guard, low-ranked stocks are fully expected to fall hard.

Did CAPS call the fall?
Less than two months ago, for instance, CAPS member JackCaps kindly guided Fools away from Primedia:

The Internet has brought about business environment changes in an inconsistent manner. Some businesses see little change or are helped by the new technologies. Others are hurt as the old ways of doing business are no longer sufficient. Primedia falls into the later group and their lack of earnings and revenue growth reflect this new reality.

Including yesterday's drop, shares of the real estate consumer guide publisher are already down 27% since that warning.

The bearish takeaway?
Always make sure the (business) trend is your friend. For market-beating returns, it's crucial that you position your portfolio to take advantage of massive shifts in commerce, rather than struggle against where the world is headed. As "The Great One" Wayne Gretzky advised, "Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been."

The final Foolish move
Investors often focus strictly on stock price movements, without realizing that developing a proper stock-picking process counts most.

Over at Motley Fool CAPS, thousands of investors are Foolishly sharing insightful investment tips to help identify tomorrow's big movers. Over time, consistently reverse-engineering winning -- and losing -- stocks will help you retire wealthy.

Log in to CAPS today and start participating. It's absolutely free -- and a lot of fun!