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Friday, October 23, 2009
Brian D. Pacampara :: Townhall.com Columnist
Thursday's Biggest Stock Stars
by Brian D. Pacampara
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Hey there, Fools. I've summoned our Motley Fool CAPScommunity once again to highlight a few of Thursday's biggest winners among the stocks with top ratingsof four or five stars:

Company

Yesterday's Gain

Harvest Energy Trust (NYSE: HTE)

33.38%

Energy Conversion Devices (Nasdaq: ENER)

10.32%

Penn West Energy Trust (NYSE: PWE)

9.00%

Honeywell International

4.25%

Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX)

4.09%

There's a reason I selected those notable gainers, as opposed to other winners making noise on Thursday, like low-rated Sears Holdings (Nasdaq: SHLD): Stocks go up all the time, but unless you were able to predict the pop, what does it matter?  

Our community of more than 140,000 CAPS Fools considers its high-star stocks the most likely to outperform the market.

Written in the (five) stars?
For example, 99.5% of the 402 All-Star members who've rated Harvest Energyhave a bullish opinion of the stock. In late July, one of those top Fools, Alex1453, explained that the Canadian energy income trust simply needed to be trusted:

Regardless of how "green" anyone thinks they can be or what (if any) energy legislation gets passed, the truth is that there is no conceivable way that any large economy can fully disavow oil and natural gas. So basically, this company is going to be around for a while, has a sellable product, and will still/always offer a reasonable to high dividend.

Harvest is up 84% since that call. In fact, yesterday's massive surge came after Korea National Oil Corp. said it would purchase Harvest for $1.7 billion, representing a 37% premium over Wednesday's closing price.

The bullish lesson?
Learn to think like a business owner, not a stock trader. All sorts of noise can suppress a stock's price in the short term, but true investors focus on the factors that reallycount over time. As CAPS' Alex1453 demonstrates, by gobbling up attractive assets at bargain prices, you give yourself plenty of "upside" opportunities -- including getting bought by one of the big boys -- to earn an outsized return.

And now for the losers ...
Of course, winning isn't everything in the stock market. Here are five of Thursday's biggest decliners with one- or two-star ratings:   

Company

Yesterday's Loss

Affymetrix (Nasdaq: AFFX)

18.06%

NVE

9.33% Continued...

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About The Author

Brian D. Pacampara is an investment expert and analyst for the Motley Fool.

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