"Don't catch a falling knife," as the old saw commands. (Pardon my mixing a cutlery metaphor.) The idea of buying a former superstar stock at a discount price certainly has its attractions, but you've got to make sure you catch the haft -- not the blade. That's where Motley Fool CAPS comes in.

Today, we once again stand beneath Mr. Market's silverware drawer, measuring which knives have fallen the farthest. Then we'll call on CAPS to ask which of these stocks -- if any -- Foolish investors believe are ready for a rebound. Let's meet today's list of contenders, drawn from the latest "52-Week Lows" list at Nasdaq.com:

Company

52-Week High

Recent Price

CAPS Rating

(5 max):

Cresud (NASDAQ:CRESY)

$25.82

$12.61

*****

AirMedia Group  (NASDAQ:AMCN)

$26.51

$11.48

*****

Telecom Corp of New Zealand

$18.25

$12.04

****

Britannia Bulk Holdings

$14.47

$10.01

****

Coeur d' Alene Mines  (NYSE:CDE)

$5.18

$2.09

****

Companies are selected from the "NASDAQ 52-Week Low" list published on Nasdaq.com on the Saturday following close of trading last week. 52-week high and recent price provided by Yahoo! Finance. CAPS ratings from Motley Fool CAPS.

Knives and knaves
If there's one good thing about a broad-based market sell-off, it's that you find a lot of terrific companies getting the ol' baby 'n' bathwater treatment. Tossed out on their rosy little bums as if they were bums of another sort. You just know that some of these babies will bounce right back once the suds subside.

Mr. Market's castaways are floating pretty far from home this week, however. Of the five stocks named above, just one hails from the U.S. of A. -- and even that one sounds vaguely Froggy. As for the rest, we've got a drybulk shipper from Ye Olde Englande, a phone operator from down under, a Chinese advertiser... and this week's top bounce prospect. Read on to learn more about...

The bull case for Cresud
Last summer, samr123 suggested we should:

Buy what China buys. [Cresud] produces many of the food staples China will need more and more of as incomes rise. Corn, soybeans, sunflower (oil), and beef are some of its major products. Not to mention farmland that it buys cheaply and improves either for its use or to sell at a huge profit.

"Not to mention" indeed! Several other CAPS members argue that farmland is actually the crux of the buy thesis for Cresud. kpedo2000, for example, told us back in September: "CRESY owns 35% of [IRSA Investments (NYSE:IRS)] (which owns 62% of [Alto Palermo (NASDAQ:APSA)] plus a large portfolio of Argentine real estate ...focused primarily on agricultural and ranching output. (Imagine Iowa without snow and you have an idea of what Argentine farmland is like -- and worth.)"

Interestingly, that comparison to Iowa in particular pops up more than once in comments on this Argentine developer. CAPS All-Star MJKpayday, for example, observed late last year:

Cresud's value comes from two areas: farm land (leasing and development) and food production and they do both very well. Just to put things in perspective: They've got about 1M acres of land , much of it farmland and there market cap is about 432M so that's about $432 an acre. In Iowa Farm land goes for about $4,000 an acre. And on top of that they have the food production business...

Investors in companies like PotashCorp (NYSE:POT) and Mosaic (NYSE:MOS) have been richly rewarded by riding the agriculture wave in recent years. And as far as land value goes, the divergence in farmland prices between Iowa and Argentina is striking.

For one thing, corporate executives in the Hawkeye State can count their blessings that they're not operating under the regime of Mr. & Mrs. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. This presidential husband-and-wife tag team seem hellbent on destroying their greatest potential for national wealth through a system of confiscatory taxes on agricultural exports. Between Argentina's new "Supply Law" on the one hand, and chronic strikes by farmers opposing it on the other, it's no wonder investors are leery of investing in Cresud right now.

Still, as the saying goes: "This too shall pass." (One hopes.) If and when it does, investors could profit handily by arbitraging land values between Cedar Rapids and Santa Cruz.

Time to chime in
Of course, the aim of this column isn't just to tell you what I think about Cresud -- or even what other CAPS members are saying. We really want to hear your thoughts. Click on over to Motley Fool CAPS and tell us what you think.

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