Tomorrow's Monster Stock?

Stocks that climb 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 Wall Street's weaknesses. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies with sound business prospects that are achieving phenomenal returns. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful firms can help you establish a winning portfolio.

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's winners, we've enlisted the help of more than 160,000 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, to sell. Just consider them starting points for your own further research into extreme buying opportunities.

In search of Bigfoot
The goth look was never trendy enough for Hot Topic to survive -- at least, not as well as golden teen retailer Buckle (NYSE: BKE) did. The dark, gloomy lifestyle was much more of a fad than even Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX), though Hot Topic's indie rock roots (if you wanted a t-shirt from the next upcoming alt-rock band, the mall stalwart was the place to go) gave it a base from which to operate.

However, a recent mall trip left me thinking I'd witnessed the latest sign of the Apocalypse. A Crocs kiosk offered stylish shoes that went beyond its traditional plastic kicks -- footwear fashionable enough to make me think the company was worth looking at again. Meanwhile, Hot Topic hawked wares from preteen heartthrob Justin Bieber, which is just so far from its goth/indie roots that I'm forced to believe the teen retailer sold its soul to follow whatever is playing on radio's Top 40 pop stations.

Maybe that's why CAPS member 21popsontop noted that the company was going through changes after the market beat it down:

Had promising popularity before the hick ups and company shows to be ready to put the needed plans together for rolling with the changes and is selling less than book and less than a 1/3 of revenue a share. Should they get things worked out ,then under $5 looks cheap. One to watch

A glittering opportunity still?
What's good for the oil refiners might not be so good for ethanol producers. Corn prices are down 17% from their record highs, and the U.S. remains awash in ethanol inventory. While that has sent some of the biggest ethanol producers into bankruptcy, it's now actually making survivors like Pacific Ethanol more attractive.

Refiners Valero (NYSE: VLO) and Sunoco (NYSE: SUN) have been buying up failed ethanol distilleries, and with ethanol prices now a lot cheaper than gasoline, investors have renewed their interest in the sector. However, a recovery by corn could reveal the run-up in Pacific Ethanol's price as the ephemeral gain it appears to be.

That has investors like CAPS All-Star Tastylunch predicting a better-than-average chance that the ethanol producer will follow VeraSun Energy and Aventine Renewable Energy into oblivion:

I've never liked corn based ethanol as a business, I think PEIX is the next Verasun. I don't see how it will be viable for long. This has a great shot at a zero, especially if Oil suffers another bout of weakness. If they couldn't make money at Oil being 140 I don't see how they even have a chance at sub 100.

A nice tailwind
American Superconductor's ability to transform its technology into a viable business model has invited considerable skepticism. But after analyst upgrades and stronger demand for its technology last quarter, CAPS member larryknows believes the need for alternative energy sources will push the company to grow from here:

The price adjustment is ending after too quick of a growth cycle. However, the technology for wind farms and super-conductor transmission lines is primed for the future. No one is sitting better prepared for supplying the coming need.

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick paragraph to make buy or sell decisions, so start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. You can 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. While you're there, weigh in with your own thoughts on whether these are tomorrow's monster stocks.