10x return stocks for 2010

Most people think it takes many years for a stock to return 10x for investors. While this is true for true-growth 10x stocks, super-spike 10x stocks and crashed-and-recovered 10x stocks typically take at most a few years to do it. In the extreme cases, it takes only a few months for a stock to return 10x to investors. And in 2010, quite a few stocks return 10x for investors within the year. As readers may suspect, only small cap or micro cap stocks can be found in this list. Some of the stocks which returned 10x to investors during 2010 are:

• Cost Plus, Inc. CPWM
• Dearborn Bancorp, Inc. DEAR
• SinoCoking Coal and Coke Chemical Industries, Inc. SCOK
• China Shen Zhou Mining & Resources, Inc. SHZ

Cost Plus, Inc. Cost Plus, Inc. is a specialty retailer of home furnishings with over 250 stores in 30 states. It currently has a market capitalization of ~$215 million. Cost Plus used to be a growth stock when it expanded its footprint throughout the US, but began its downfall around 2003, and nearly got decimated during the financial crisis. It began its recovery around Q1 of 2010, and can be viewed as a crashed-and-recovered 10x stock. Dearborn Bancorp, Inc. Dearborn once had its glory days before the sub-prime bubble bursted. It currently trades ~$1.8/share and its current market capitalization is only $14M, so its 10x return for 2010 was mainly speculation that it wouldn't fall apart. It will be a long way before Dearborn can demonstrate that it's out of the trenches. SinoCoking Coal and Coke Chemical Industries, Inc. SinoCoking is a Chinese Coal company. It currently trades at ~$13/share, and has a market capitalization of ~$275 million. It spiked from ~$4/share to $45/share in about 1 month from Feb 2010 to Mar 2010, and gave almost all of them back by the end of 2010. China Shen Zhou Mining & Resources, Inc China Shen Zhou is in the rare earth minerals mining business. Like many other rare-earth related companies, started its meteoric rise when words got out that China might restrict exporting rare-earth mineral to Japan in late September. They then again spiked after China limited exporting quota for 2011 in December. All the rare-earth minerals stocks clearly have the momentum now. While they had receded somewhat since the beginning of this year, it would be very difficult to know whether momentum buyers would take them to yet another level if new news come along. Buying or shorting at this level is simply a coin toss right now. Daniel Ho is the founder of 10xreturn.com, a financial portal providing financial information and market statistics for investment professionals.