Tomorrow's Monster Stocks?

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 over the past decade. These aren't penny stocks; they're viable companies with sound business prospects, achieving phenomenal returns every year. Finding just one or two of these monstrously successful firms can help you establish a winning portfolio. 

Stalking the monster
To find tomorrow's winners, we'll enlist the more than 125,000 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.

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

In search of Bigfoot
It may be a trend worth noting: companies are finally standing up to the abuses of regulatory agencies and filing lawsuits against them. Whole Foods Market (Nasdaq: WFMI) has had it with the FTC's harassment over its meddling in the Wild Oats acquisition and is taking the agency to task -- and court -- to have it stopped. ViroPharma is similarly taking on the FDA because it believes the regulatory agency arbitrarily approved an unsafe generic version of its GI therapy Vancocin.

The agency changed the way it approved the release of generic drugs, something ViroPharma only found out about because of a third party analyst's report. After trying unsuccessfully to get the FDA (and the Department of Health & Human Services) to disclose through the Freedom of Information Act how it made the determination, it had little recourse but to take them to court to force the issue.

CAPS member zzlangerhans finds ViroPharma an attractive investment because Vancocin is a top-selling therapy that should do well for it for some time. The generics issue remains but the biotech has proven it won't take the threat meekly.

[T]he 65M and rising quarterly Vancocin revenues appear to be safe for the time being. Phase III marabavir data is on the schedule for Q1 2009 but I wouldn't hold through this if the stock enjoys a substantial bump from Cinryze approval.

Sounding the depths of Loch Ness
Rio Tinto is slashing payrolls and selling off projects in response to the worldwide economic slowdown, as its iron ore production slowed in the fourth quarter, but it was the news that Aluminum Corp of China (NYSE: ACH), also known as Chalco, might increase its stake in the company that put a shine on the miner. Chalco already is the largest shareholder in Rio Tinto with 9% of the shares outstanding and it has said it was increasing its holdings to 15%. The deal would help Rio Tinto pay off some of its burgeoning $39 billion debt.

CAPS member badiuy has adopted the philosophy of Mark Twain who noted they're not making any more land when he pointed out that the Earth's scarce resources are getting scarcer daily: "in the long run, Earth is running out of resources. So, basic materials are going to become more valuable as time passes. Nice dividend is enough for me to see it through."

A chance for scary growth
It takes more than a few All-Star picks and a quick paragraph to make buy or sell decisions so start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. You can 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. And while you're there, weigh in with your own thoughts on whether you think these are tomorrow's monster stocks.