Are These Stocks Bouncing Back?

However hard the market slams a stock, there's always the chance it'll come bouncing right back. We'll consult our Motley Fool CAPS community to find shares on the rebound, examining one specific sector of the economy in search of companies with rising CAPS ratings.          

There are 106 stocks listed under food & beverage in the CAPS screener; we've found more than a few that are well-respected, with four- and five-star ratings. Those accolades mean our 170,000- member CAPS community is confident that these stocks will beat the market in the months ahead. Let's see what members are saying about the ones below:

Source: Motley Fool CAPS; Yahoo! Finance.

With the S&P 500 up 9% over last year, CAPS food & beverage stocks did a little better. The average stock is up 11.5% from the year-ago period. Bolstering those returns were performances like those of brewer Craft Brewers Alliance, up 92% year over year, and Boston Beer (NYSE: SAM) -- the maker of my favorite beer, Samuel Adams -- which was up more than 80% year over year.

While Kraft has had a good run, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wants to raise inflation through a second round of quantitative easing. Let's take a closer look at the other two stocks in our chart.

Some spring in its step
With all the scrutiny that small-cap Chinese stocks have been getting lately, there's little wonder that some might decide to make the leap back to being privately held companies, like Harbin Electric may choose to do.

Although companies like China Marine Food, China Sky One Medical (Nasdaq: CSKI), and Fuqi International (Nasdaq: FUQI) seem to have gone out of their way to generate the skepticism that surrounds their financial statements, the reduced valuations carried by the segment may make some of them attractive bargains, providing investors with a large upside.

Yet for investors like CAPS member rodman1112, it presents a quandary: Can you trust the numbers that say China Marine is trading at a good price?

Really like the cash position along with the industry in general. But with china its always hard to tell whats the truth

Driving a bargain
As the winning stocks in the suds segment show, beer makers have been an investment to raise a toast to. Despite being a brewing behemoth, Anheuser-Busch InBev is also cashing in on the surge in attention being paid to craft brewers. It actually owns more than a third of Craft Brewers Alliance and uses its distribution network muscle to get its suds on the shelves of retailers.

Considering the growth and popularity of craft brews, it's not surprising the kings of the beer market want in. Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP) also has its own "craft" brews, but many beer aficionados don't think a craft brew can really be made inside a huge beer conglomerate. Even the leading craft brewer, Boston Beer, may soon have an identity crisis: Because of its growing popularity it might no longer qualify as a "craft beer" based on the number of barrels sold.

The problem for Anheuser-Busch, as analyst David Sterman sees it, is that the market is valuing the King of Beers as if it were one of these craft brewers:

In 2010, cost cuts can be considered to be the biggest positive. But those are short-term gains -- investors are bidding up shares as if AB Inbev was a high-growth stock. Profit growth is likely to slow sharply after 2011, as this is a mature player in a mature industry. Another key negative: the company still carries more than $40 billion in long-term debt and will need to generate massive amounts of cash flow to whittle that down. Further economic weakness or market share losses in the U.S. would imperil that plan.

The ball's in your court
There are many factors that go into whether a stock is a buy or sell, so it pays to start your own research on these stocks on 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. Head over to CAPS today and share your thoughts with other investor analysts on whether you think these stocks are ready to bound higher.