10 Stocks Shaking the Market

Some stocks are one-hit wonders, making a big splash when they first appear, then quickly fizzling into obscurity or oblivion. But for other stocks, that initial big move is merely a preview for bigger and better gains to come.

Today, we've compiled 10 stocks that made some of the biggest upward moves over the past month. We paired that list with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. The higher each stock's rating, the greater CAPS members' faith in that company's ability to keep on beating the market.

^Sept. 18 to Oct. 19.

As the markets whipsaw to changes in consumer sentiment, there will be weeks like this one, where we see gains that are exceptionally ahead of the pace of the movers and shakers of prior weeks. So before we get shaken out again, let's see why the CAPS community thinks some of these companies might continue to outperform the market.

A mighty temblor
It's something AT&T (NYSE:T) can understand. With iPhone users hogging bandwidth on its network, it's experiencing dropped calls and intermittent problems on its system. According to some estimates, the iPhone generates 50% of the smartphone traffic on AT&T's backhaul network. As smartphone technology continues to advance, the need for more capacity per user grows with it, and is why all wireless carriers are expanding their networks by turning to wireless backhaul. (Backhaul is industry-speak for connecting one network to another.)

According to the market analysts at Visant Strategies, base stations with more than 24 Mbps of backhaul capacity will grow by more than a factor of 20 from 2009 to 2015, while smaller base stations will see their numbers halved.

Wireless backhaul specialist FiberTower is apparently reaping the benefits of this growth as it was able to report a second-quarter profit of $0.14 per share in August, compared to a loss last year. It generates profits by charging fees based on the amount of bandwidth traffic carried across its network -- AT&T represented 39% of revenues and Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) commanded 20%.

FiberTower has been a sleepy stock on CAPS, but all that could change. Shares have soared more than 800% this year and have quadrupled in value over the past six months as they rose from their deathbed of being a literal penny stock. The backhaul leader has also outperformed the other companies comprising the Wireless Telecommunications Service sector on CAPS, which has inched up only 3% in the past 30 days.

Feeling the aftershocks
Advertiser Focus Media offers customized LCD displays, poster frames, and outdoor billboards in shopping malls, elevators, and hospitals across dozens of Chinese cities. It is one of the largest out-of-home advertisers in the country, but state-owned entities frowned on SINA (NASDAQ:SINA) acquiring it and delayed signing off on the deal until it ended up falling through.

What began as a rally in late September on expectations the agreement would be restructured, has continued. Focus Media's shares have extended the run-up now that the media company is freed from the shackles of being acquired.

On CAPS, I had bet against Focus Media, believing the unraveling deal would hurt the stock, and more recently CAPS member OoIoO thought it ominous that SINA didn't seem particularly concerned with the merger having gotten away from it.

bulls would have been all over this back in April if they thought this was a win. look at the weak volume over the last six month trend. Sina did not look like they were up in arms when the merger collapsed. are these guys even making any money?

So far, Focus Media has proven us both wrong. What do you think? Head over to Focus Media's CAPS page and let us know.

Shake, rattle, and roll
It pays to start your own research on these stocks at 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.