Tomorrow's Monster Stocks

Stocks that climb to 10 times their original price are a rare breed -- 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 over the past decade. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies with sound business prospects, achieving phenomenal returns every year. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful firms can help you establish a winning portfolio.

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's monster stocks, we'll enlist the more than 115,000 members at Motley Fool CAPS. We've compiled a list of the most successful CAPS players, 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.

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.

Let them eat cake
Perhaps the saying "half a loaf is better than no loaf at all" guided ConocoPhilips management when they scurried out of Venezuela along with ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) last year, rather than give in to dictator Hugo Chavez' demands. Considering that Conoco still had a 20% stake in Russian oil giant Lukoil, which was being given rights to develop certain oil properties, maybe the company figured it could get a backdoor entrance to foreign oil riches. That gamble seems to have paid off; Conoco's latest quarterly reports showed a surprise contribution from its Lukoil stake. That said, I'm sure the company's also holding its breath as Russia works overtime to crush foreign investment in its oil companies.

As oil's star seems to fade, shares in Conoco have dimmed, too. CAPS member TMFDeej -- whose slight toward law enforcement I'll forgive -- still believes that this oil producer is a bargain:

ConocoPhillips is a company that I personally own and have blogged about a number of times in the past. Now normally I don't like cops, but I'll make an exception for this one. Instead of stealing your money by giving you tickets, this cop is printing it. ConocoPhillips currently trades at around only 6 times its estimated 2008 earnings. Investors appear to be afraid of the company's refinery operations, its disappointing exploration efforts, and the recent drop in the price of natural gas (it's North America's largest nat gas producer). But cheap is cheap and this company is a great value here.

You've got that certain glow
Shares of oil producer Vaalco Energy, which has most of its holdings in West Africa, have been riding a rollercoaster these past few months. First, a hedge fund said it would mount a proxy fight; then the price of oil began to tumble. The hedge fund eventually withdrew its challenge after Vaalco agreed to a number of its demands. Last week's second-quarter earnings release was predictably strong, based on the pricing environment the company enjoyed over the past three months.

The oil producer's sporting hefty cash flows, which CAPS All-Star member ypcheng figures will ultimately count most:

I am going broke with oil drilling. [Vaalco] is a five-star company in CAP. The P/E is changing from 29 to 12 next year. Lots of cash and no debt. Huge cash flow. I guess this is all it matters.

A chance for scary growth
It pays to start your research on these stocks on 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. Then weigh in with your own thoughts; let's hear whether you think we've uncovered tomorrow's monster stocks today.