• Their average market cap is a mere $110 million.
• If you backout the largest company in the group at the time, the average market cap falls to 64.7 million
• 3 companies had a market cap of $10 million or less - as low as $3 million

You would expect to see names like Dell, Apple, Starbucks, etc. but they are nowhere to be found on the list. Nope, the best performing stocks started out as obscure and ignored little companies that received no attention of any kind from analysts and brokers.

There is a great lesson to be learned here. Search for companies that have achieved market acceptance for their innovative products and services, have a solid management team, reasonable share structure, a good investor relations firm (had to say it and are relatively ignored by the “experts”.

At CFRN WE’RE finding great little companies and telling our listeners about it.

Hopefully, one our companies can make this list in the next 10 years. In the meantime, here is the current list - see any names that you recognize and may have skipped over?
Company 1997 Market Cap Return, 1997-2006
Hansen Natural HANS $10 million 25,538%
Chico’s (NYSE: CHS) $34 million 8,773%
American Eagle (Nasdaq: AEO) $78 million 7,884%
Daktronics (Nasdaq: DAKT) $17 million 7,328%
Celgene (Nasdaq: CELG) $111 million 6,118%
4 Kids Entertainment $3 million 5,447%
NVR $191 million 4,871%
Comtech Telecommunications $7 million 4,653%
Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) $460 million 4,082%
Frontier Oil (NYSE: FTO) $85 million 3,616%

*Data provided by Capital IQ.

CT's Triple Crown - Azco Mining AZMN, HealthSonix HSXI, Nettel Holdings NTTL