Tomorrow's Monster Stock

Stocks climbing to 10 times their original price are rare breeds. But they're not impossible to find -- especially when you have Fools for friends.

The market's best stocks include companies that have risen dozens of times in value by taking advantage of the market's weaknesses. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies with sound business prospects that are achieving phenomenal returns. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful companies can help you establish a winning portfolio.

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's winners, we've enlisted the help of more than 170,000 monster-trackers at Motley Fool CAPS. We've compiled a list of the most successful CAPS members, dubbed All-Stars, whose picks have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in price. Then we plucked out some of their recent picks for stocks they find equally promising.

Score is how many percentage points that pick is beating the S&P 500.

Of course, this is not a list of stocks to buy -- or, for those monster stocks that our CAPS All-Stars have already found, to sell. Just consider them starting points for your own further research of extreme buying opportunities.

In search of Bigfoot
If the recent actions surrounding privately held Stock Spirits is any indication, investors would be wise to avoid taking large stakes in top rival Central European Distribution anytime soon.

The private-equity forces currently owning Stock Spirits had initially attempted to sell the biggest vodka distributor in Poland to Diageo (NYSE: DEO), but that U.K. spirits maker ended up backing out. Then the PE firms floated the possibility of putting it out on the market through an IPO at a value of around $513 million, but now they've dropped those plans.

Earlier this year Central European Distribution stumbled after quarterly earnings and full-year guidance came in well below analyst expectations. Impairment charges caused much wider losses, and the prospect of higher prices added to its costs, causing the distiller's operations to look as gray and uninspiring as its name. Insiders may be buying, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should follow.

However, highly rated CAPS All-Star bradford86 thinks the company just might be brewing up some new growth strategies: "gut feeling. i've been following [Central European Distribution] for a few years... after reading the last conference call notes this looks cheap.. the company is in the process of restocking low wholesale inventories... sometime in the next couple months... easter was late this year, their eps projections look good for this year..."

Drink up additional insights on the Central European Distribution CAPS page and tell us whether an investment here will leave us in high spirits.

Does not compute
The inventory problems that data-storage specialist EMC suffered last year inflicted significant collateral damage on disk-drive maker and supplier STEC, but it resulted in very little harm to itself. Its stock remains almost 23% higher than where it traded a six months ago, while STEC is down 2%, but 35% below its 52-week high.

Of more immediate concern to EMC was the admission by its security unit RSA Security that the hacking attack against Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) occurred as a result of its compromised authentication tokens. The SecurID tokens are used by millions of workers for secure access to their corporate networks, and RSA owns 70% of the "two-step" authentication market. The security breach is giving rivals such as CA Technologies (NYSE: CA), a software-based rather than hardware-centric security option, new life.

Also worrying investors is the popularity of tablet computers, which typically don't offer hard disk drives. Analysts have suggested that it's a death knell for the PC makers, but drive makers also have some skin in the game.

CAPS member gkvber doesn't have the same concerns and in fact believes EMC's marketing itself as a cloud player has distinguished it from the competition and allowed it to rise above the troubles afflicting others.

EMC has done well by aligning most of its business units to a consistent message around the big data/cloud category that it's been actively defining. This keeps it ahead of the more storage-focused competition. Credit goes to good and relatively new marketing leadership, timely acquisitions and cash to make it all possible.

At CAPS, 96% of the nearly 3,500 members rating the stock are in agreement. You can follow along by adding EMC to your watchlist and seeing how high into the clouds it can go.

A bright idea
Being early on an investing decision can often be equivalent to just being wrong. But sometimes, it just means … you're early. I think my call in 2009 that Radio Shack might be enjoying its last Christmas was just that -- early, and not wrong. Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) has been rumored to be interested in buying the chain of electronics, but it's a rumor that seems to crop up regularly the worse Radio Shack performs.

The Shack has a difficult time competing against its bigger rival for larger items such as TVs, and its switch to focus on handsets is likely to face equal challenges, considering Best Buy has also pushed hard in that direction, let alone the plethora of wireless outlets already out there.

CAPS member ijefi is still counting on the takeover angle to salvage an investment, but tell us on the Radio Shack CAPS page whether it's still short circuiting.

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick pitch to make buy or sell decisions, so start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS and marvel at the range of opinions there.