3 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 in the Motley Fool CAPS community also like a bargain, apparently. Below, you'll find three companies whose shares are selling at least 50% below their 52-week highs, but which still earn high 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
The one thing markets hate is uncertainty. MELA Sciences was hoping the FDA would meet this month to decide the fate of its skin cancer screening device, but the advisory panel needs more time and has pushed the meeting back to November.

MELA took a big hit when the FDA delayed pre-market approval for the MelaFind device because they needed more data. Because it emits light waves to capture images of suspected lesions, and uses a sophisticated algorithm trained on MELA's database, to analyze the images to provide information on whether a biopsy is needed, the device is a significant departure from the methods used by General Electric (NYSE: GE) or Siemens PET/CT scanners and might explain in part why the FDA hesitated.

However, the device is so novel, and there seems to be such great need for it that CAPS member jrusso9722 just doesn't see how the MelaFind cannot be approved:

Since Mela-Find (r), is not a drug, I believe, FDA wonders what criteria to use to approve it. I'll predict FDA will approve it. How in God's name can they not approve an imaging device to identify the most deadly form of skin cancer. They dare not keep it from the public.

A reserve player
Network connection services provider Neutral Tandem has suffered from the analyst community's belief that robust competition from Level 3 Communications (Nasdaq: LVLT) will cut into its revenues. They might not be far off though, because although the wireless carrier switchboard reaffirmed full-year guidance earlier in the year, it missed analyst expectations for the second quarter and now says results will come in at the low end of the forecast. That sort of weakening outlook suggests the competition may just be getting to Neutral Tandem.

CAPS member kmote is as fearless as the nearly 1,100 other members who've rated the company to outperform the broad market averages, believing it will be supported by its hefty cash position:

About half the stock price is cash, take a look at the balance sheet, currently $5.65 per share is cash.

With friends like these
Now that STEC has resolved its ZeusIOPS inventory issues with EMC (NYSE: EMC), the solid-state drive maker is ready to rebound and investors may find that it's time for it to become a truly great investment for them. It seems to be only a matter of when, not if, SSDs supplant traditional drives in corporate storage networks. But STEC's reliance on EMC for the vast bulk of its sales creates concentration risk for investors who may wonder when they next hiccup will come.

STEC has moved to address these concerns by putting in place plans to sell more drives to its other customers, including Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), IBM, and Hitachi. That could be why 92% of the CAPS members rating the drive maker see it beating the market, but you can tell us on the STEC CAPS page whether you think it will spin out of control.

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