When a stock's share price is lower than a North Dakota thermometer in February, investors tend to give it the cold shoulder. But as fortunes change and the market warms to a stock's prospects, its price can heat up in a hurry. Unfortunately, it's hard tell that a stock is melting investors' hearts until after it's made that upward leap.
Taking the market's temperature
But Motley Fool CAPS' proprietary ratings, aggregated from the opinions of 180,000-plus members, offer a great way to monitor Investor sentiment. Following a CAPS rating trend, we can find previously low-rated companies that have recently enjoyed a bump in investor confidence and see whether they're truly heating up -- or headed back to the deep freeze.
Obviously, such stocks are not ones you automatically buy; rather, they're just a starting point for further research. Yet if some of the best investing minds are taking notice of these stocks, maybe we should, too.
Caution: Contents may be hot
Chip design testing house ChipMOS Technologies
ChipMOS, which counts the likes of Himax Technologies and Micron among its top customers, has been aggressively building out capacity throughout the early part of the year. At less than 4 times earnings estimates, the tester is looking pretty cheap since it supplies customers that supply Apple
The CAPS community is starting to come around to that thinking, too, as its CAPS star rating bounces back. Tell me on the ChipMOS Technologies CAPS page or in the comments box below your views on whether a fall introduction of the latest, greatest Apple product will boost it higher, and then add the stock to your Watchlist to be alerted to events as they occur.
The next big thing
Ne'er-do-well biotech Keryx Biopharmaceuticals
Where they're probably seeing hope is in Zerenex, Keryx's other drug in development, which it will now concentrate all of its efforts on. It's a therapy for patients with end-stage renal disease who suffer from elevated phosphate levels, and it's thought there's a greater likelihood for success here, though with a smaller addressable opportunity. I noted before, however, that success with a smaller market is preferable to failure with a bigger one.
Considering it's had some positive results in Japan with Zerenex, it may be something to build on. Keryx has been looking to improve upon Sanofi's
CAPS member NHWeston102 sees Keryx as a buyout opportunity for someone, but while the biotech has enjoyed a slight boost in confidence among investors, the low two-star rating the members of CAPS community has assigned it suggests they still think there are better places for your money.
Weigh in yourself on the Keryx Biopharmaceuticals CAPS page, and then add its stock to the Fool's personalized -- and free -- stock-tracking service, where you can be alerted if it makes a go of it with Zerenex.
Checking the mercury
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