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 that have sound business prospects and 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've plucked out some of their recent picks for stocks they find equally promising.

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

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 further research of extreme buying opportunities.

In search of Bigfoot
Behind the backdrop of a housing crisis worse than the Great Depression, the full panoply of businesses servicing the industry is crashing and burning.

Homebuilders such as Hovnanian (NYSE: HOV) reported losses much worse than Wall Street was expecting, as home sales tanked 20%. To compound the already-delicate situation, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), the country's biggest mortgage originator, just stopped offering reverse mortgages to senior citizens, and loan delinquencies and new policies written by mortgage insurer MGIC Investment (NYSE: MTG) were both less than the market anticipated, causing its shares to test new lows.

PMI Group is sharing MGIC's pain, and its plan to turn around through expansion hasn't quite convinced the ratings folks at Standard & Poor's. They believe that the business PMI has written up from late 2008 onward will be profitable but that the second half of this year is still going to be rough. PMI may even breach the regulatory thresholds for writing new business put in place at the state level. But highly rated CAPS All-Star TSIF thinks there are enough technical indicators, along with a few fundamental ones, to paint a clear picture for PMI.

PMI Group appears to have hit bottom....(Again)....swing trade. Who knows if speculators will enter in and keep the prop up, but after a two year low any HINT of good news will drive this one upward again, hard. The question is whether there is any good news around before another plunge.

Ensure that your opinion is heard on the PMI Group CAPS page, and tell us whether an investment here is something to build on.

Bright, shiny things
The correction in silver's price was not necessarily caused by any underlying fundamental flaw in the market. Rather, the Comex exchange changed the rules on margin requirements for trading silver futures. It forced investors to sell their holdings, which dropped the price of the metal. With the silver ETF holding large quantities of actual silver, this action would naturally have an impact on price. The demand that was bubbling up, however, may very well still be present.

Though the iShares Silver Trust ETF is down 27% from the highs it achieved as the price of silver rallied over the course of the past year, it's stabilized in the $35-an-ounce range. CAPS member JaysRage says the components are in place for a significant rally.

I think significant inflation has already been seeded. I like PMs and other commodities for the short and intermediate term. I do not believe that rate hikes are coming soon, because it would be a death knell to the phantom recovery, and I think that significant debt reduction moving toward a full term election is unlikely, and anything after that is far too late.

Follow along by adding the iShares Silver Trust to your watchlist and watch to see whether conditions become ripe for a rebound.

Taken to the woodshed
There are many pretenders to the throne now hitting the tablet market, but Apple's iPad remains the one that holds sway in consumers' minds. Like the iPod in MP3 players and the iPhone in smartphones, the iPad holds far more cachet than anything its competitors have put out. Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) created some buzz when its Xoom tablet was unveiled, but sales have since been lackluster, and hardly anyone else has come even that close to generating any excitement for an iPad alternative.

CAPS member DaveMarcus82 says the competition hasn't offered a compelling reason for consumers to look elsewhere: "Wouldn't be surprised if they jump to $400 this year, with the release of so many new products. The iCloud is underrated, and will keep people even more chained to Apple."

Tell us on the Apple CAPS page whether there's a reason we should even bother looking at another product, let alone another stock.

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 on display.