5 Top Stocks at Half Price

You love buying your shirts when they go on sale. And who can resist a buy-one, get-one-free offer? So when our stocks go on sale, why do we wail about their low prices?

Smart investors like Warren Buffett or Marty Whitman love it when their stocks are suddenly selling at bargain-basement prices. For them, these companies become no-brainer buys.

The investors who populate the Motley Fool CAPS community also like a bargain, apparently. Below, you'll find five stocks whose shares are selling at least 50% below their 52-week highs, but which still earn top ratings in our investor-intelligence database. Consider it a BOGO sale on stocks.

Naturally, we want you to look a bit closer at these stocks before buying. You can get low-priced appliances in the dent-and-ding section of your home-remodeling superstore, but their quality might not be so great. Same applies here: Make sure there's nothing seriously wrong with the company before you plug it into your portfolio.

Fill 'em up
With the election of Barack Obama, nuclear energy stocks may give some investors pause. But CAPS member tstokesbme says new plants might be built. And if so, uranium enrichment supplier USEC would benefit:

The [premier] uranium supplier based in the US. No more money to be made from soviet nukes, but plenty of money to be made from an inevitable move toward more nuclear power plants in the US. It's got to happen, there's no other way to move off of oil before the wells run dry.

This week, we've seen how steel producers like AK Steel (NYSE:AKS) are cutting production because of continuing lower demand attributed to the weak auto industry. That's causing a ripple effect, which contributed to Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) cutting its production of molybdenum, a mineral used to strengthen steel. The effect continues to spread: Iron ore producer Vale has reported that it will reduce ore output 9% a year because of lower global demand.

CAPS member aguadaboca sees much of the lower valuations for these producers as an overreaction:

local market and worldwide investors over-reacting to currency losses and mis-management by a few major Brazil companies. The [real] is priced better for continued export growth, particularly in the oil, iron ore, sugar, paper and orange juice sectors, and due to Brazil's trade surplus, the banks and the [government] are better off than the US with much more flexibility. Domestic growth is better than expected, with utilities, retailers and [telephone] sectors strong. The US$ will not advance too much more with the autos, banks and housing sectors draining the growth out of the good areas, such as retailing, computers and travel.

Even last month, when oil prices were somewhat higher than they are today, top-rated CAPS All-Star TheGarcipian wrote that he felt Suncor Energy had both a fundamental value and the technical expertise to outperform the market:

Suncor is the place to be for a long term investment in energy. People will always need energy, and with crude oil dropping to $80/bbl, I think we are approaching a bottoming out for this stock. Looking at its numbers... I see lots of stuff to like: forward P/E of 6.4, trailing P/E of 8.8, EV/EBITA = 6.6 (very low), profit & operating margins of 15.3% and 18.4%, [return on assets]=9%, [return on equity]=26%, quarterly revenue & earnings growth at 80.4% & 12.3%, [respectively], and a Debt/Equity ratio of only 48.3%. All of these numbers are good numbers for an oil-n-gas company.

Half a mind
It pays to start your own research on these stocks on 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.

Sign up today for the completely free service, and tell us whether these stocks are twice as good at half the price.