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?

Thankfully, our Motley Fool CAPS service is on your side. Its CAPShot feature combines the predictive ranking of CAPS with some additional metrics to highlight the very best companies for further research. Here are the criteria for today's screen:

• CAPS1000: Among the top 1,000 investors in CAPS -- those who have proved themselves in the hurlyburly of the market by successfully making the right calls -- what percentage of those who rate a particular company believe it will outperform? We want at least 80%.
• Return on equity: How much will the company return to investors in exchange for their hard-earned money? We seek a minimum of 14% here.
• Total 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 0.5.
• Average revenue growth: We want companies that can grow their sales in good times and bad. Over the past five years, 14% per year is the threshold.
• Gross margin: Of those sales, how much passes further into the income statement? This screen demands no less than 35% .

The resulting list is a set of companies that have performed well over the past several years, and which our community expects will continue to perform well going forward. Here's a sample of what this CAPShot screen pulled up today:

Source: Motley Fool CAPShot. TTM = trailing 12 months, MRQ = most recent quarter.

Remember, these are just suggestions for further research. But by doing some of the heavy lifting for you, we've immensely improved your odds of unearthing a superior investment idea.