Even on the market's worst days, buyout news and other short-term forces can send individual stocks up by 10%, 25%, even 50%.
For example, shares in Omniture jumped 26% last week when Adobe Systems said it would pay top dollar -- $1.8 billion -- for the company.
But beyond less-predictable events like that one are stocks with fundamentally compelling reasons for recent momentum. The trick is to find those stocks. That's where Motley Fool CAPS comes in.
The story behind the story
CAPS is no crowd of lemmings. Its best-performing members' opinions do more to shape each company's rating than the picks of poorer-performing peers. Let's use the collective wisdom of more than 140,000 CAPS members to filter out the noise and find companies offering strong momentum.
We'll use CAPS' handy stock screening tool to quickly zero in on companies with a price increase of at least 25% in the past four weeks, a market cap of greater than $100 million, and a beta of less than 3. Below is a sample of stocks that our screen returned. If you'd like, run this screen yourself -- just keep in mind that results may change as the market does.
Company |
CAPS Rating
|
4-Week |
---|---|---|
Danaos |
**** |
59.5% |
E*TRADE Financial |
**** |
30.5% |
Western Refining |
**** |
26.4% |
Nokia |
**** |
25.7% |
NovaGold Resources |
*** |
39.6% |
Source: Motley Fool CAPS. Price return from Aug. 21 through Sept. 18.
Over a barrel
After Western Refining swung to a second-quarter loss, like refining giant Valero
One finger, many pies
Nokia has been busy spinning a few more plates lately. The company is working to regain its prominence in the smartphone space also inhabited by Research In Motion
And Nokia is moving into the netbook business with its Booklet 3G, which will go up against competitors like Hewlett-Packard and Dell
And you?
What's your story? Whether you buy the tale of a stock that's soaring or souring, your own research is more important than collective opinions. But these collective opinions can make your due diligence a whole lot easier.
Add your take on these or any of the other 5,300 stocks that our 140,000-plus members have covered in Motley Fool CAPS. It's totally free to be a part of the community, and the payback is more than worth it.