There's a school of thinking that sees more promise in superior gains than in digging up great starting prices, even if you seem to be overpaying for that bottle rocket. Richard Driehaus, the godfather of momentum investing, takes exception to buying low and selling high: "I believe that far more money is made buying high and selling at even higher prices." And our Rule Breakers analysts would agree with that: momentum-like criteria show up twice in the six pillars of that newsletter's strategy.
Price momentum may not be a traditional marker of a strong business or a capable management team, but when you think about it, those qualities should eventually generate strong returns. This is just a slightly backwards way of looking at the numbers, throwing "cause" and "effect" into the same basket to find a starting point for more research.
So what kind of bottle rockets can we find today? I took that question to our CAPS screener, looking for stocks that have at least doubled from 52-week lows and are still within 10% of yearly highs.
One stock that caught my eye among the resulting 127 tickers today is Radware (Nasdaq: RDWR). If you bought shares of the expert in efficient network delivery 52 weeks ago, you're sitting on a massive 131% gain today. It's been nothing but blue skies ahead since the end of 2008 and the stock looks set to explore new highs -- again and again.
Here's how Radware's gains stack up against some direct rivals over the last year:
|
Company |
% Above 52-Week Low |
% Below 52-Week High |
|---|---|---|
|
Radware |
140% |
(0.1%) |
|
Brocade Communications Systems (Nasdaq: BRCD) |
5% |
(50.7%) |
|
Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) |
0.2% |
(28%) |
|
Juniper Networks (Nasdaq: JNPR) |
22% |
(15.3%) |
|
F5 Networks (Nasdaq: FFIV) |
165% |
(4%) |
Source: Yahoo! Finance. Data as of August 28th.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and you should always do more research after finding a promising stock by screening. In this case, we're looking at a true innovator in a mission-critical section of the data networking market.
Radware does two things to the point of excellence: network security and location-aware network routing. The security focus alone would be enough to ensure strong business and make the company potential buyout fodder in today's market; the routing solution enables enterprise-class customers to build their own ultra-efficient global networks in a manner that's eerily similar to what Akamai Technologies provides as a service. In a world that's ever more ravenous for limited bandwidth resources, that's a deadly one-two punch that will keep Radware relevant and growing for years to come.
Buy now or forever hold your peace: this bottle rocket still has plenty of dry powder left in its growth engines.
