10 Stocks to Shake the Market

In music, they're called one-hit wonders -- singers who belt out one hit tune, but are never able to regain the magic of that popular 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. These companies burst on the scene -- many during the tech-bubble heyday -- but never lived 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 with higher ratings have the confidence of members, who believe they'll continue to move higher in the future and outperform the market.

Sources: Motley Fool CAPS and Yahoo! Finance.

With only one of these stocks carrying the top rating of five stars, let's see why the CAPS community thinks it might outperform the market.

A mighty temblor
Maybe it was Ben Bernanke calling a market bottom -- again! -- or perhaps it was President Obama and his advisors adopting a more positive outlook instead of the doom-and-gloom reporting we've become accustomed to. Whatever it was, temporary-staffing provider Spherion got a bounce in its shares in March, sending them up more than 44% over the past month.

It's understandable that an employment agency would see its stock in the doldrums during this recession. The national unemployment rate exceeds 8%, with the labor market still losing jobs.

And despite Bernanke saying the recession might end this year, he also suggested that the unemployment rate will go higher, even though it's at its highest level in 25 years, with about 4.4 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007. And Spherion's own "employee confidence index" continues to decline as workers become more pessimistic about their ability to find a new job and less optimistic about the future of their current employer.

Thus any hopeful notes about better prospects for the future would undoubtedly help staffing agencies. Not only has Spherion enjoyed a boost, but Manpower also saw its shares rise 11.4% last week, while Kelly Services has risen 29% from its low point earlier this month. 

If the economic prognosis is as hopeful as the seers say it is, then when companies are ready to begin hiring again, it's quite possible they'll go with a temp staff at first before hiring more permanent workers. Some are even expecting a wave of consolidation to begin sweeping the staffing industry.

CAPS member tortoise702 looked at Spherion back in December and found that it was cheaply priced on a host of metrics:

Temp agency - understandably low with unemployment going through the roof. However, they are in much better position compared to Kelly services (KELYA), [MPS Group] (MPS), and [TrueBlue] (TBI). President recently put his money where his mouth is, buying $10,000 shares. No LT Debt, PEG extremely low at .17

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. It's free.