3 Stocks Shaking the Market

Some stocks are one-hit wonders, making a big splash when they first appear, then quickly fizzling into obscurity or oblivion. But for other stocks, that initial big move is only a preview for even bigger and better gains to come.

Today, we've listed three stocks that made some of the biggest upward moves over the past month, which we'll pair with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. The higher each stock's rating, the greater CAPS members' faith in that company's ability to keep on beating the market.

^From July 9 to Aug. 11.

As the markets whipsaw to reports of second-half economic performance, the S&P 500 has been volatile. So before we get shaken out again, let's see why the CAPS community thinks some of these companies might continue to outperform the market.

A mighty temblor
Central-nervous-system pharmaceutical developer Cypress Bioscience has made a series of curious decisions in the past few weeks. It received a buyout offer of $4 a share from investment management firm Raimus, which already owns 9.9% of the company's outstanding stock, but rejected it as too low. It then went and said it was discontinuing its marketing partnership with Forest Labs (NYSE: FRX) for the fibromyalgia treatment Savella, which competes against Pfizer's (NYSE: PFE) Lyrica and Cymbalta from Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY).

Cypress says it will save about $10 million a year by ending the partnership, firing 86% of its workforce, and selling its personalized medicine business by the end of the third quarter. Yet Savella is its only marketed product, and while it will still receive royalties from Forest, it accounted for 90% of its revenues this quarter. Raimus just might be right to question what Cypress is doing here.

With $38 million in cash, equivalents, and restricted cash related to upfront payments received, CAPS member walt373 says at current prices you're essentially getting the rest of the business for free.

Let us know on the Cypress Bioscience CAPS page whether the pharmaceutical is working to stop investor pain or has been sampling its own concoctions.

A speedy opportunity
Solar industry gear maker GT Solar seared analyst projections this quarter, posting profits of $0.11 per share, well ahead of the $0.04 Wall Street had predicted. Those earnings came in on revenues of $135 million, down 30% sequentially, but almost double the $73 million analysts had forecast.

GT's guidance for 2011 was also well ahead of the professional analyst community's thoughts, all of which caused GT's stock to shine. Considering its move into LEDs, where it expects to sell as much as $15 million worth of ingots in 2011 and $50 million worth in 2012, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) is one chip maker willing to spend upward of $100 million to also push into both the solar field and LEDs.

CAPS member Lumiere33 says these diversified businesses will help GT Solar gain ground and grow:

SOLR is currently entrenched in three rapidly growing markets: polysilicon production, polycrystalline PV, and now LED (sapphire crystal substrate technologies). It is a growing profitable company with great margins, no debt, and a worldwide customer base.

Ciao, baby
Probably not a lot of people realize that one of the leading makers of components for natural-gas vehicles was really more vested in the Italian car market than in the U.S. CAPS All-Star member HashPipe99 says Fuel Systems Solutions' dependency on foreign markets surprised him, too:

Ooooh did I make a mistake with this one. In real life too. Automotive nat gas conversions, sounds good, right? What if I told you this was basically an Italian auto parts manufacturer. Still sound as enticing?

Yet maybe it wasn't such a mistake after all. While it benefited in the previous quarter from the expiration of Italian alt-fuel tax credits that pulled vehicle sales forward, it beat estimates again and says it will now be able to predict demand for bi-fuel vehicles.

Shake, rattle, and roll
With these stocks 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.