10 Stocks to Shake the Market

In music they're called one-hit wonders, singers who belt out tunes but are never able to regain the magic of their big hit song. Think Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" or Brownsville Station's "Smokin' in the Boys Room." Monster hits never to be repeated.

We have seen similar one-hit wonders in stocks, too, like Pets.com or drkoop.com. Companies that burst onto the scene -- many during the tech bubble heyday -- never to live up to the promise they held.

Whole lotta shakin' going on
While nostalgia's fun, "10 Stocks to Shake the Market" isn't about finding stocks that can't repeat their success, it's about looking at those that have made big moves and are likely to continue doing so.

To do that, we're looking at 10 stocks that made some of the biggest moves up over the past month. We'll then pair that with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. Those that rate higher suggest that the members believe they'll continue to move higher in the future and outperform the market.

Data as of Feb. 2, 2008.

With less than half of the stocks carrying a three-star or better rating, let's see why the CAPS community thinks even some of their lesser lights might outperform the market.

ZymoGenetics
In mid-December, biotech ZymoGenetics wasn't looking all that healthy, sporting a stock price that reflected the broken-down potential its therapies offered. At the time, CAPS member glennwhiteside discounted that there was much to offer other than presenting itself as a possible buyout target:

Sales of Recothrom have been miserable -- the company is expecting only $7 million this year and that was probably the low hanging fruit. CEO Bruce "Jawbone" Carter has been unable to convince Wall Street that [ZymoGenetics] is turning the corner and now he's retiring. Hospitals are looking to cut costs anywhere they can right now. I don't know if there's anything other than a generous acquisition proposal that could keep the price of this stock from trending toward zero.

Oh, how a month can change everything! ZymoGenetics shook itself out of its zombie stupor, buying back the full rights to a cancer drug candidate from Novo Nordisk as well as entering into a lucrative deal with pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) that could see it receive as much as $1 billion. The deal for the hepatitis C therapy gives ZymoGenetics a cool $85 million in cash up front with a possibility of $430 million more from hepatitis C-specific milestones. Should it then pass various other milestones, the total payoff to the biotech could be $1 billion or more.

U.S. Gold
CAPS member GregoryMoore isn't alone in his thinking that the words "stimulus package" are just a sucker punch for inflationary spending programs. When governments start inflatin', gold starts risin', and investors git goin'. Keeping the printing presses running full time to pay for all this goodness we'll be receiving is going to help out the gold producers like U.S. Gold when everyone flocks to something that is believed to retain its value:

I'm starting to think the "stimulus package" is just a big splurge of cash for special interests and won't help the economy. Poor management of US Debt and printing money raises some serious concerns about the underpinnings of the dollar and our economy. I think its time to start picking up gold as a hedge against a collapse of the dollar.

Shake, rattle, and roll
With these stocks shaking the market this past month, it pays to start your own research on them at 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.