10 Stocks Shaking the Market

Some stocks are one-hit wonders, making a big splash when they first appear, then quickly fizzling into obscurity or oblivion. But for other stocks, that initial big move is only a preview for even bigger and better gains to come.

Today, we've compiled 10 stocks that made some of the biggest upward moves over the past month. We paired that list with the ratings issued by our Motley Fool CAPS community. The higher each stock's rating, the greater CAPS members' faith in that company's ability to keep on beating the market.

As the markets whipsaw to changes in consumer sentiment, there will be weeks like this one, where we see gains exceptionally ahead of the pace of the movers and shakers of prior weeks. So before we get shaken out again, let's see why the CAPS community thinks one of these companies might continue to outperform the market.

A mighty temblor
It wasn't exactly the call GenVec investors were waiting to hear, but it sounded good nonetheless. The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company announced that Swiss drug giant Novartis had agreed to fund GenVec's research into hearing loss and balance disorders using its adenovector gene transfer technology. The partnership could yield more than $213 million in milestone payments and royalties to GenVec, if the companies are able to eventually market a product.

What shareholders perhaps would have preferred to hear was a deal involving GenVec's pancreatic cancer gene therapy drug, TNFerade. Results of an interim analysis are expected in late March or early April; plenty of time still for the stock to go into even more of a tizzy.

Highly rated CAPS All-Star MichaelinWA finds the combination of a Novartis deal and the expectations of positive developments on the pancreatic cancer study too good to pass up:

Basing this pick on Novartis support of developmental candidates, which I think will support the stock price. Also, potential (though risky) play on Phase 3 results of the pancreatic cancer drug. Finally, there is potential revenue source from vaccine work by GenVec.

But another CAPS All-Star isn't so sure. zzlangerhans cautions that the preliminary Phase 3 data on TNFerade released in 2008 wasn't well received by the market, and so there's little reason to suspect it will alter the playing field even if GenVec reports positive results this time around:

The problem with the recent price rise is that there really hasn't been any good news about TNFerade, or any particular reason to think that the next interim analysis will be any better than the first. A recent orphan drug designation may have attracted attention back to the stock, but was there any doubt they would receive it? The orphan drug status does not represent any form of endorsement of a drug's efficacy by the FDA. The data I've seen so far argues strongly against TNFerade being a game changer in the battle against a monster like pancreatic cancer.

It's true GenVec is getting some much-needed cash from the Novartis agreement, but it's not a blockbuster announcement, and the real money deal still seems in the future. Why not join the discussion on GenVec's CAPS page to add your view on whether this can lead to further groundbreaking developments?

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.