3 Reasons to Buy STEC Today

Historically, tumultuous times offer some of the best opportunities to buy stocks, and the market's recent mess surely qualifies. While many investors are getting more defensive these days, there's still quite a few who think memory maker STEC (Nasdaq: STEC  ) is buy material.

In our Motley Fool CAPS community, 92% of the 665 investors rating the company are bullish, so there's no shortage of reasons why STEC will thrive, three of which I've highlighted below.

But here at The Motley Fool, we're all for looking at both the good and bad sides of an investment. Once you're done with this article, you can read the case against the stock, weigh in with your own comments below or rate STEC yourself in CAPS.

1. Growth industry
Although the adoption of solid-state drives (SSD) could take some time to play out, many CAPS members like STEC's strong position in this booming market, and see room for growth in the years ahead. Companies like HP (NYSE: HPQ  ) and IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) are incorporating the drives into their servers and investors expect more companies to follow, placing them inside more products as SSDs become more affordable.

2. Beaten-down shares
After reaching new highs last year, STEC's shares have retreated more than 60% to a level that some CAPS members believe is a more reasonable price. The steep fall was fueled in part by the haircut that shares received in November when it became known that key customer EMC (NYSE: EMC  ) was carrying over its 2009 inventory into 2010. Despite the hiccup at EMC, some investors see a bright future ahead and a good opportunity to pick up shares at a much cheaper price.

3. Tech spending improvement
While the economy isn't in full recovery just yet, and companies are still watching their budgets, recent signs of an improvement in tech spending has some investors feeling more bullish on other IT-focused firms. Companies like Akamai Technologies (Nasdaq: AKAM  ) , Western Digital (NYSE: WDC  ) , and Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO  ) have reported a substantial uptick in business in their recent quarters, and investors see STEC poised to benefit as businesses upgrade their computer networks.

To see details of what CAPS members are saying now about STEC, just click on over to Motley Fool CAPS and have a look -- or add your own thoughts directly to this story in the comments box below.