7 Highly Rated Stocks on Sale

I'm always looking for a good deal, whether that means buying an extra box of cereal when it's on sale or pouncing on undervalued stocks. The idea that anybody would sell a stock for less than it's worth may seem silly, but legendary value investor Ben Graham tells us, by way of allegory, how we can look out for these situations.

In The Intelligent Investor, Graham introduces readers to a wacky chap named Mr. Market. Mr. Market's game is to pay you house calls on a daily basis to offer to sell you interests in businesses he owns or to buy from you interests in businesses you own. Sometimes Mr. Market will show up at your door very excited and offer you premium prices for your holdings, while at other times he'll be inconsolably depressed about the future and will offer to sell you what he has for as low as pennies on the dollar.

So to find some of the stocks that Mr. Market is depressed about, I've turned once again to The Motley Fool's CAPS investor community. Our community of investors gave each of the companies below a five-star rating, the highest possible, just 30 days ago:

Data from Motley Fool CAPS as of Dec. 16.

As the table shows, most of these stocks are all still very well regarded in the CAPS community, despite their underperformance over the past month. These are not formal recommendations, but they could be a great place to kick off further research. I'll even get you started with some thoughts on Legg Mason.

Why so blue?
The stock market downturn was a particularly rough ride for asset manager Legg Mason. The company, which houses most of its assets under management in fixed-income funds, took some heavy damage from risky, highly leveraged investment vehicles. The company also saw some of its former top-performing asset managers -- notably Bill Miller -- do a performance nosedive. Significant asset outflows followed.

Last week, the company, which has been on the mend, announced that assets under management were $694 billion, down from $703 billion in September. Although the decrease wasn't all that large, investors responded by knocking down shares, no doubt disappointed that asset-gathering momentum hasn't picked up.

What the bulls say
But there seem to be quite a few positives on Legg Mason's side right now. Asset managers are often valued as a percentage of their total assets under management, and with a market cap of $4.7 billion, Legg is trading at less than 1% of its AUM. That compares pretty favorably with competitors such as BlackRock and Franklin Resources, which are trading at 3.3% and 4.6% of AUM, respectively.

The uptick in performance for Legg's fund managers is also very notable. My fellow Fool Rick Munarriz pointed out that long-term investors in Bill Miller's fund are still well underwater, but more recent performance has been much improved versus the past couple of years. And, unfortunately, mutual fund investors seem to focus on recent performance the most.

On CAPS, Legg Mason's stock hasn't quite hit the top five-star level, but there are currently 969 CAPS members who think the stock will outperform the rest of the market. CAPS All-Star gpiazzolla gave the stock a thumbs-up in September and had this to say: 

Assets under mgmt are stabilizing, asset mix is good (56% fixed income, mostly corporates, 22% equity, with style and most of mutual funds strongly recovering) and Gabelli recently (7/23) made a strong case about how the stock could double in the next two or three years. I tried to apply the rule of Marty Whitman about how to value asset managers and this stock seems to be the most undervalued.

But here's the important question: Do you think the recent drop has created a good buying opportunity? Or will Legg Mason continue to struggle? Let the community know what you think -- head over to CAPS and share your thoughts with the other 145,000 members who are currently part of the community. Even if you'd prefer to pass on Legg Mason, you can check out a couple of the other stocks listed above or any of the 5,300 related stocks on CAPS.

Want to follow in the footsteps of an investing legend? I highlighted what Warren Buffett looks for when he's scouting for investments.