7 Shots at Superior Returns

Finding those superior investment ideas for putting your hard-earned dollars to work can be quite intimidating. Value? Momentum? Five-star? What factor will give you that edge to find a 10-bagger?

One service you can enlist on your side is Motley Fool CAPS and something we call CAPShot. This uses the predictive ranking of CAPS and mixes it up with some additional metrics to pull out the very best companies for further research. Here are the criteria for today's screen:

• CAPS1000: Of the top 1,000 investors in CAPS, those who have proved themselves in the hurly-burly of the market by successfully making the right calls, what percentage of those who rate a particular company have it as "outperform?" We want at least 80%.
• CAPS rating: Over the three years we've been tracking companies, four- and five-star companies as a group have outperformed the broader market. We want to pick members of that group.
• Return on Equity: The company has to make it worthwhile for the investor to put his or her money on the line. Fifteen percent is the minimum here.
• Debt-to-Equity: Of course, too much debt can overburden a company. Especially in these troublesome times. The maximum we're screening for today is 0.45.
• Average Revenue Growth: We want companies that can grow their sales in good times and bad. Over the past five years, 15% per year is the threshold.
• Gross Margin: And of those sales, how much passes further into the income statement? No less than 35% is what this screen looks for.

The resulting list is a set of companies that have performed well over the past several years and are expected by our community to continue to perform well. Here's a sample of what this CAPShot screen pulled up today.

Source: Motley Fool CAPShot. TTM = trailing 12 months.

Remember, these are just suggestions for further research. But by doing some of the heavy lifting for you, the odds of finding a superior investment idea have been immensely improved.