Amass Your Fortune With These Top Stocks

You don't need the investing acumen of Warren Buffett or the riches of a trust fund baby to achieve financial success.

Since the stock market is your best hope for realizing your dreams, start investing today, by putting away small sums of money every month. Then seek out undervalued small-cap stocks for your greatest returns. I like these stocks because they offer opportunities for growth, while still being mostly overlooked by the big investors.

To find these future giants, we'll screen for stocks with market values less than $3 billion, an earnings surprise of 15% or more in the previous quarter, and forecasts for long-term earnings growth potential of at least 15%. We'll filter our findings through the collective investing wisdom of the 165,000 members in our Motley Fool CAPS community. If the best and brightest CAPS players think these stocks hold potential, we ought to take notice, too.

Here are some of the stocks this simple screen found:

Source: Yahoo.com and Motley Fool CAPS.

Of course, this is not a list of stocks to buy -- just a starting point for more research. We need to look more closely at these companies to see whether analysts' faith in them is well-founded. Still, since the CAPS community's helping us out, their favorite selections might be a good place to begin.

An alternative opportunity
It's time for the management team at Denny's to put up. After beating back a bitter proxy fight from a group of hedge funds, the restaurant chain now needs to work on enhancing shareholder value. Denny's was charged with losing customers to rivals, including DineEquity's (NYSE: DIN) IHOP, amid slack sales. Sales fell 17% last quarter and they've fallen at a compound rate of 10% over the past five years.

Trading at just six times earnings, its stock does look attractive now, particularly when you compare it to Cracker Barrel (Nasdaq: CBRL) which goes for more than twice that multiple. With analysts assigning it better growth prospects than either DineEquity or Cracker Barrel, highly rated CAPS All-Star TMFDeej puts Denny's in the extreme value category now that the proxy fight is behind it.

After the not surprising loss in the attempt to gain board seats by the unimpressive Dash and friends (man I should have shorted this stock the minute I saw the interview with him) Denny's is now getting into dirt cheap territory again.

Big opportunity
Big theater experience IMAX has a pretty good record over the last year of beating analyst expectations, so with the Street hacking away at the company's 2010 earnings estimates it might be a good opportunity for IMAX to surprise investors once again. Analysts expect IMAX to bring in just $0.19 per share in the just-finished quarter, more than 20% less than what they did just two months ago and they keep paring back estimates to lower levels.

Partially that's a result of moviegoers paying higher prices for tickets to enjoy the extravaganza, which many apparently aren't up to doing for just any movie. Analysts point out that IMAX theaters account for a declining percentage of recent big box office movies including Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story 3, and the latest in the Twilight saga.

CAPS All-Star member kkconway advises not to be lulled into thinking that because tough times are upon us, people won't appreciate what IMAX brings to the big screen.

... let me remind you that in the Mother of All Double Dips, during the 1930s, Americans went to movies in droves to see how the other half lived in a fantasy world of wealth, much like Silvester the cat, who ate pages of Gourmet magazine when Tweety bird was out of reach! Meanwhile, IMAX is building theatres in China, as well as expanding here at home. 

Another dark cloud
Are solar investors ready for the light to be shone on their industry? A recent Reuters story highlighted how Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) is just the latest solar shop to come under scrutiny by the SEC for aggressive accounting practices. Sunpower (Nasdaq: SPWRA), LDK Solar, and JA Solar are just some of the companies having to answer for certain financial practices.

That hasn't stopped JA Solar investors from backing their preferred provider. More than 95% of CAPS members rating it believe it will outperform the broad market averages. Head over to the JA Solar CAPS page and brighten up the board with your view on solar's future.

Foolish final thoughts
Stock investing is not brain surgery. Finding good, undervalued companies is not as difficult as the professionals want you to think. You just have to commit to starting now, and do so regularly. Now's the time to begin!