5 Top Stocks at Half-Price

You love buying your shirts when they go on sale. And who can resist a buy-one-get-one-free offer? So when our stocks go on sale, why do we bemoan their low prices?

Smart investors like Warren Buffett or Marty Whitman love it when their stocks are suddenly selling at bargain-basement prices. For them, these companies become no-brainer buys.

The investors who populate the Motley Fool CAPS community also like a bargain. Below, you'll find five stocks whose shares are selling at least 50% below their 52-week highs, but which still earn top honors from our investor-intelligence database. Consider it a BOGO sale on stocks.

Naturally, we want you to look a bit closer at these stocks before buying. You can get low-priced appliances in the dent-and-ding section of your home-remodeling superstore, but their quality might not be so good. Same thing here: Make sure there's nothing seriously wrong with the company before you plug it into your portfolio.

Take two, they're small
While Tata Motors has gotten good press coverage for its "People's Car" -- the Nano, which costs about $2,500, at least in India -- I gotta admit that its micro-mini size doesn't give me much comfort, regardless of what the crash test analyses say. The price may be right, but it's a glorified golf cart that has me thinking that if I'm interested in going green, I'll take a Fusion Hybrid from Ford (NYSE:F).

The bankruptcy of Chrysler, though, has raised the possibility that we'll be seeing more Tic-Tac-sized cars in the future. With Fiat taking an ownership stake in the company, the promise of its small-car technology being imported here drove the alliance.

Yet what sells in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere doesn't necessarily translate into a healthy American market. Penske Auto Group (NYSE:PAG) reported that it sold all 5,700 Smart cars in the first quarter of this year and expects to sell 20,000 for all of 2009. As bad as the market has been for Ford, it was able to sell almost 130,000 vehicles in April alone.

So consumers aren't exactly flocking to the ultrasmall car design in any great numbers. Tata may be able to move a bunch of cars if it keeps the price of the Nano low, but no one expects the U.S. car, when it's introduced, to be priced at the same level it is in India. Still, a low price doesn't guarantee any sizable share.

Tata has other issues to contend with as well. The Jaguar and Land Rover nameplates it bought from Ford have troubled the carmaker, and a bailout it was seeking from the British government for them is mired in turmoil.

Yet the Nano has driven anything but nanosized curiosity, and Indian bookings for the vehicle have far exceeded production plans. As a result, Tata is resorting to a lottery system for the first 100,000 cars. That kind of response has investors like CAPS member snootloop thinking an investment in Tata is better than buying a lottery ticket:

If you have the patience and a long term horizon, then give Tata Motors a look. They can't keep people out of the showrooms just to take a look at the Tata Nano. an estimated 350,000 people are plunking down $80 just to enter a raffle in the hopes they are 1 of 100,000 who get to buy a Nano over the next twelve months. The demand is through the roof. Plus, you are looking at the type of vehicle that is European friendly. The only real issue with the Nano at the moment is that Tata is forced to use temporary facilities that can only produce about 3,000 cars a month, when they aim for about 250,000 production target.

Have half a mind
It pays to start your own 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.

Sign up today for the completely free service, and tell us whether these stocks are twice as good at half the price.