Fools were out and about this past week in an investing world jam-packed with actions and ideas. Here are three articles you might find useful as you decide how to invest your money.

5 Bargain Stocks to Take Advantage of the Plunge
 The market as a whole might seem like a mess, but that doesn't mean there are no good places to put your money. Fool analyst Matt Koppenheffer has found five "bargain stocks" that deserve watching.

Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), with a market cap of $5.7 billion and a price-to-book value of 0.58, makes Matt's list despite the gloomy commentary usually surrounding the BlackBerry maker. "What I can't help noticing is that the company is still plenty profitable, still earns a fair return on its equity, and has a very clean, debt-free balance sheet," Matt wrote. "It's dicey to bet on a business that's getting beat up by the competition, but RIM's financial strength may put the odds in investors' favor."

Read the article to find out the other four stocks catching Matt's attention and see whether they fit your investing temperament.

These 4 Stocks Should Soar in the Next 10 Years
 You're in the investing game for the long term, right? Then you'll want to check out four stocks that Fool analyst Brian Stoffel thinks are primed to soar over the next decade. Surveying the natural gas sector might be a good exercise for investors who need practice looking beyond the here and now.

Prices are down, but Brian says there's no reason to count the industry out, and he looks beyond the obvious to tap Heckmann (NYSE: HEK), which serves the water needs of the natural gas and oil industries. "Heckmann spent millions of dollars building out an infrastructure that included water pipelines, a trucking fleet, and hard-to-obtain injection wells to meet demand" of the companies using hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from the ground, Brian reported. He likes the company's diversification and its first-mover status.

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) also makes Brian's list of potential big winners for the long run. "With huge growth prospects in new iterations of the iPhone and iPad both domestically and abroad, the company is trading for a dirt cheap 14 times earnings and 11 times free cash flow," he wrote.

Read the article to learn more about stocks poised to soar in the next 10 years.

Ford: We're Maxed Out
 Having lots of people wanting to buy your product is a good thing, but it can be a tricky thing in the auto industry. Fool analyst John Rosevear reports on the situation at Ford (NYSE: F), where the company has balanced lower orders with keeping fixed costs such as running factories and paying workers in check.

"The problem of too much production capacity is the problem that nearly sank Detroit; which did sink Ford's ancient rival General Motors (NYSE: GM)," John wrote. "Arguably, the most important part of GM's 'bailout' wasn't the cash it got from the feds, it was the bankruptcy court restructuring that allowed it to shut down and discard over a dozen of its U.S. factories, a major contributor to GM's current profitability."

Now that Ford is seeing an increase in demand, it needs to ramp up production, but that is no easy thing when factories are already running at maximum capacity, John wrote. And there's also the hurdle of persuading parts suppliers to increase their output.

Read the article for more of John's insight on the situation at Ford.

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