Last Wednesday's eurozone discussion was hailed by the world as an agreement among EU leaders to contain the region's debt crisis. Naturally, this bit of good news countered the market's oversold pessimism and left the global markets to experience a long-awaited rally.
Dark days
European governments agreed to leverage 440 billion euros in a rescue plan, but the details remain unclear. In fact, the details are so unclear that many skeptics suggest the funds may not be sufficient, and the hope of a swift resolution that led world markets to rally may be based on false assumptions. They suggest the rally will fade away as quickly as they have in the past.
But there are a number of analysts in the bullish camp who say investors have been overly negative and it is very possible the rally could correct the markets to a more reasonable level of pessimism.
Sunny skies ahead?
Greg Budy of Sydney based financial advisory firm AIMS Finance is one such optimist. In a conversation with CNBC on Monday, he says, "what we see now is a manageable restructure of Greek finances, the U.S. although not racing ahead, growing about two and a half percent and ... China [is] by no means [facing] a hard landing ... Overall, I think we've passed the darkest part of the storm, there's a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and I'm actually quite optimistic about 2012."
Furthermore, bullish analysts like Sailesh Jha, Head of Asia Market Strategy at SEB Bank Singapore believe "markets have underestimated growth in the U.S. economy." She tells CNBC, "the data is panning out to the idea that the fourth quarter in terms of GDP in the United States should probably be stronger than what we saw in the third quarter, pretty much led by consumer and investment spending, which was evident in the third quarter data release."
Investing ideas
So, if the dark days are indeed over, where should you start looking for your next investing idea? One place to start is by looking at the companies that have already proven to be winners during the recent downturn.
To create this list, we started with a universe of about 200 stocks that are close to their highest point over the last 52 weeks.
From this list, we collected data on insider buying and identified the names that have seen significant buying from company insiders during the current quarter.
Insiders think there's more upside to these rallying stocks. If the dark days are indeed over, should any of these names be on your watch list?
List sorted by distance to the 52-week high. (Click here to access free, interactive tools to analyze these ideas)
1. PharMerica
2. Black Hills
3. Generac Holdings
4. Seattle Genetics
5. RLI
6. Cadence Design Systems
7. HEICO
8. Everest Re Group
9. Roadrunner Transportation Systems
Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the stocks mentioned above. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.
Kapitall's Eben Esterhuizen and Rebecca Lipman do not own any of the shares mentioned above. Insider data sourced from Yahoo! Finance.