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 by taking advantage of the market's weaknesses. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies that have sound business prospects and are achieving phenomenal returns. 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 180,000 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.

Score is how many percentage points that pick is beating the S&P 500.

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.

Hiding in plain sight
It's been a long walk in the wilderness for biopharmaceutical InterMune for Esbriet, its treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. It was crushed in 2010, when the FDA went against the advice of its advisory panel and rejected the drug. While the biopharma got a boost from the EU's approval of Esbriet in December 2010, the stock has drifted down, ultimately losing three quarters of its value from those highs along the way.

The stock jumped 10% yesterday as fourth-quarter results showed it sold $2.8 million worth of Esbriet since its launch in September. It seems the Fool's Brian Orelli was correct in his assumption that by comparing the niches served by drugs manufactured by Pfizer and Gilead Sciences, investors could infer that InterMune would have a big winner on its hands, more so if the FDA reconsiders its position.

While the outcome of additional trials is still up in the air, CAPS All-Star and biotech guru zzlangerhans thinks InterMune can benefit from launches in other European countries: "I still think it is very possible that pirfenidone will be a commercial disappointment in Europe, as pulmonologists choose to await the results of the ASCEND trial which will not even complete enrollment until H1 2012. 2012 will also bring launches in France, Spain, Italy, and eventually the UK."

Let us know in the comments section below what you think of the possibility, and then add InterMune to your watchlist to see whether it hit the big time again.

A long time coming
There was little holiday cheer in enterprise-software giant Oracle's quarterly report last month, which dumped a load of coal into the market's stockings just before Christmas. It missed analysts' earnings expectations for the first time in 10 years (not to mention its own internal projections), and revenues inched upwards only 2%. Don't expect the fourth quarter to feature any fireworks, either.

Yet new software and hardware introductions look promising, and it's not losing market share to salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), which, according to at least one analyst, is seeing growth in CRM gains nearly cut in half, while in Europe sales growth has withered away nearly completely.

But with the new, lower valuation the market assigned Oracle, its free cash flow continues to trade at less than 10 times its enterprise value.

CAPS member uvedaleman believes last quarter's hiccup won't be repeated and that it will soon return to its winning ways: "the last quarter was an anomaly, oracle has everything including hardware in place, just needs to ink new contracts, cloud business still growing fast."

You can let us know on the Oracle CAPS page whether you agree that this was just a one-off event, and then add the stock to the Fool's free portfolio tracker and see whether it reverts to the mean.

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick pitch to make buy or sell decisions, so start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS and marvel at the range of opinions there.

While you're at it, see the one stock The Motley Fool thinks is changing the face of business. The new special free report highlights the only tech stock you'll ever need to own, and it's yours free for the asking! But only for a limited time, so act now.