Stocks and Dollars

Kapitall submits:

Below is a list of seven rallying small-cap stocks, with market caps between $100-$300M. All of these U.S. companies are currently trading above their 20-day, 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Interestingly, these stocks have also seen significant insider buying over the last six months, with increases in insider ownership above 3%.

If you’re interested in small-cap momentum ideas, the list might offer an interesting starting point. Full details below.
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1. Saga Communications Inc. (SGA): Broadcasting Industry. Market cap of $147.90M. The stock is currently 6.32% above its 20-day MA, 16.68% above its 50-day MA, and 45.42% above its 200-day MA. Net shares purchased by insiders over the last six months at 26,076 shares, which represents a 91.4% increase in insider ownership. This is a risky stock that is significantly more volatile than the overall market (beta = 2.41).

2. Alliance Healthcare Services, Inc. (AIQ): Medical Laboratories

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StreetAuthority submits:

By David Sterman

From employment trends to factory production levels to trade figures, all signs are pointing to an improving U.S. economy. And in the early stages of any economic rebound, investors always flock to stocks with small market capitalizations. Back in 1990, when the economy was about to break out of its shell, the Russell 2000 Index, which focuses on small cap stocks, rose 100% during the next 36 months.

These days, these small caps are back in vogue again. The Russell 2000 has risen for seven of the last eight months. The index is now within just a few points of all-time highs hit back in 2007.

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Zacks Small-Cap submits:

The magnitude 8.9 earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that hit near Sendai, Japan will continue to have ripple effects for months to come on small to large cap companies in an assortment of sectors.

While Japan has dealt with earthquakes throughout its history, the March 11, 2011 earthquake was the largest to hit the country in 120 years, causing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of damage and a nuclear crisis, of which the extent is still unknown.

The wrath of the triple assaults from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster to the third largest global economy (behind the U.S. and China) can be expected to have a noticeable effect on some companies in industries within many sectors including basic materials, capital goods, consumer goods, energy, industrial goods, technology and utilities.

To put Japan’s importance to the U.S. in perspective, Japan is the United States’ fourth largest trading partner.

In

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Rash Menaria submits:

Following is a list of 19 companies with market caps between $50-200 mn, consensus EPS growth rates for 2011 and 2012 greater than 50%, and a PEG ratio of less than 0.5.

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Value Expectations submits:

The Russell 2000 index, the most common benchmark for small-cap stocks, ended a strong week last week gaining 3% and ending at its highest level in 3 ½ years. Year to date, the small cap index has gained over 7%, just above the YTD returns on Dow Jones Industrial Average [(DIA) 6%] and S&P500 [(SPY) 5%]. Now that the first quarter is behind us, let’s review the top performers from within the Russell 2000 index as well as highlight a few companies that are likely to outperform sector and index peers.

Figure 1: Year-to-date return of the Russell 2000 index. (Source: Google Finance)

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VFC submits:

The early-stage RXi Pharmaceuticals (RXII) pulled off what could become a surprising coup last week when it announced a merger with privately-held Apthera, Inc. for just 4.8 millions shares of RXII’s common stock.

At the time of the announcement, the deal was worth just over seven million dollars, not including possible payments on future commercial and regulatory milestones.

With this deal, RXi acquires the Phase III-ready NeuVax, an immunotherapeutic treatment for breast cancer that is scheduled to be tested in a Phase III trial in 2012. Given the market potential of successful cancer vaccines, RXi could have come up with a steal of a deal.

That said, cancer vaccines – although possibly the wave of the future for cancer treatment – are still highly speculative investments, given that the road to regulatory approval for these treatments are dotted with a long line of failures.

Given the success of Dendreon (DNDN),

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Kurtis Hemmerling submits:

Great things do come in small packages, at least according to extensive research carried out by Kenneth R. French and Eugene Fama. They posit that small-cap stocks have greater upside potential than larger ones, and they offer empirical data to back up such theories in the paper Value Versus Growth: The International Evidence (1996).

To augment our small-cap picks, we will borrow research from Narasimhan Jegadeesh and Sheridan Titman from a paper called Momentum (2001). The other article by Jegadeesh published in the Journal of Finance in July 1990 is called Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns. The data points to a phenomenon known as “momentum” in which stocks that have outperformed the market over the past 12 months continue to do so the following year. But when looking at stocks with strong momentum over just one month, the opposite is true. Stocks outperforming the market one month will

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Kapitall submits:

The following is a list of small cap stocks with market caps between $100-$300M that have seen a significant decrease in shares shorted between 1/28/2011 – 2/28/2011.

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Given that short sellers seem to think at least some of the bad news is already priced into these stocks, this list might offer a very interesting starting point for investors looking to benefit from the potential rise of these small caps. Full details below.

1. Orexigen Therapeutics, Inc. (OREX): Drug Manufacturer. Market cap of $137.95M. Shorted shares decreased by 16.25%, from 11.94M to 10.00M shares. The stock has lost 51.27% over the last year.

2. Cost Plus Inc. (CPWM): Department Stores Industry. Market cap of $217.59M. Shorted shares decreased by 8.94%, from 1.23M to 1.12M shares. The stock is a short squeeze candidate, with a short float at 11.44% (equivalent to 7.08 days of average volume). The stock has

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