Hot Small Cap Companies To Buy For 2014

What do small cap stocks MKS Instruments, Inc. (NASDAQ:MKSI), Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc. (NYSE:SKT), and Kaman Corporation (NYSE:KAMN) have in common? Absolutely nothing, on the surface, and no, it's not a setup for painfully bad punchline. There is a common thread among KAMN, SKT, and MKSI right now, however... they're all three going into my mental (though publicly-tracked) portfolio this afternoon.

The next obvious question: Where did I come up with Kaman Corporation, MKS Instruments, and Tanger Factory Outlet Centers? I'll be the first to admit I have a penchant for the obscure, but don't let their size fool you. I found the small cap stocks when performing a routine (weekly) scan of equities that meet a strict set of technical and fundamental criteria. The latter tells me which stocks to but, while the former tells me when.

Best Supermarket Companies To Own In Right Now: FuelCell Energy Inc.(FCEL)

FuelCell Energy, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development, manufacturing, and sale of high temperature fuel cells for clean electric power generation primarily in South Korea, the United States, Germany, Canada, and Japan. The company offers proprietary carbonate Direct FuelCell Power Plants that electrochemically produce electricity from hydrocarbon fuels, such as natural gas and biogas. Its fuel cells operate on a range of hydrocarbon fuels, including natural gas, renewable biogas, propane, methanol, coal gas, and coal mine methane. The company also develops carbonate fuel cells, planar solid oxide fuel cell technology, and other fuel cell technologies. It provides its products to universities; manufacturers; mission critical institutions, such as correction facilities and government installations; hotels; and natural gas letdown stations, as well as to customers who use renewable biogas for fuel, including municipal water treatment facilities, br eweries, and food processors. The company was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Danbury, Connecticut.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By John Kell and Lauren Pollock var popups = dojo.query(".socialByline .popC"); ]

  FuelCell Energy Inc.(FCEL) said its fiscal first-quarter loss narrowed as strong gains in product sales drove the power-equipment maker’s overall revenue higher. Shares surged 18% to $4.64 premarket.

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ: FCEL  ) will release its quarterly report on Monday, and bullish investors have sent shares of this fuel-cell power-plant developer soaring in recent days as the space has drawn a lot of attention lately. With industry peer Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG  ) having made a deal with Wal-Mart to supply the retailer with fuel-cell power, Plug, Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP  ) , and FuelCell have all inspired dreams of huge growth in the near future.

Hot Small Cap Companies To Buy For 2014: OCZ Technology Group Inc(OCZ)

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and distributes computer components for computing devices and systems worldwide. It primarily offers solid state drives, flash memory storage, memory modules, thermal management solutions, AC/DC switching power supply units, and computer gaming solutions. The company?s products are used in industrial equipment and computer systems; computer and computer gaming solutions; mission critical servers and high end workstations; personal computer (PC) upgrades to extend the useable life of existing PCs; high performance computing and scientific computing; video and music editing; home theatre PCs and digital home convergence products; and digital photography and digital image manipulation computers. OCZ Technology Group, Inc. offers its products to retailers, on-line retailers, original equipment manufacturers, systems integrators, and distributors. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in San Jose, Califo rnia.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Duprey]

  The not-so-great and wonderful OCZ
  There was no company-specific news that caused solid-state-drive maker OCZ Technology (NASDAQ: OCZ  ) to fall almost 8% Wednesday. But an article that appeared on Seeking Alpha �questioning whether the company had six months or less to live before it filed for bankruptcy seemed to coincide with its fall.

Hot Small Cap Companies To Buy For 2014: Rackspace Hosting Inc(RAX)

Rackspace Hosting, Inc. operates in the hosting and cloud computing industry. It provides information technology (IT) as a service, managing Web-based IT systems for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises worldwide. The company?s service suite includes dedicated hosting comprising customer management portal and other management tools that manage data center, network, hardware devices, and operating system software; and cloud computing that enables customers to provide and manage a pool of computing resources, as well as delivery of computing resources to business when they need them. It offers cloud servers, cloud files, and cloud sites, as well as cloud applications, such as email, collaboration, and file back-ups; and hybrid hosting that provides a combination of dedicated hosting and cloud computing services. The company also offers customer support services. It sells its service suite through direct sales teams, third-party channel partners, an d online ordering. The company was formerly known as Rackspace.com, Inc. and changed its name to Rackspace Hosting, Inc. in June 2008. Rackspace Hosting, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Brian Nichols]

  Rackspace Hosting Inc. (NYSE: RAX  ) takeover talks are heating up as analysts believe that CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL  ) has a high probability of making a bid. While this might make sense as a way to better compete against companies like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) , is this really in the best interest of shareholders?

Hot Small Cap Companies To Buy For 2014: EZchip Semiconductor Limited(EZCH)

EZchip, a fabless semiconductor company, engages in the development and marketing of Ethernet network processors for networking equipment. Its products include network processor chips, evaluation boards and network-processor based systems, and development software toolkits. The company offers network processors for use in forming the silicon core of networking equipment, such as switches and routers; and for voice, video and data integration in various applications. Its network processors are single-chip solutions, which enable its customers to design multi-port line cards, such as processing and classification engines, traffic managers, media access controllers, as well as a range of specialized hardware blocks that accelerate various functions. The company offers Evaluation systems which enable customers to test NPU-based systems; and toolkits that assist customers in creating, verifying, and implementing solutions based on its network processors. It provides a library f eaturing data plane code for a range of applications, which include Metro Ethernet protocols, Multi-Protocol Label Switching, IPv4 and IPv6 routing, Access Control Lists, GPON/EPON OLT functionality, Network Address Translation, and Server Load Balancing. The company sells its products directly, and through contract manufacturers and distributors to network equipment vendors. It markets its products in Israel, China, Hong Kong, the Far East, Canada, the United States, and Europe. The company was formerly known as LanOptics Ltd. and changed its name to EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. in July 2008. EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. was founded in 1989 and is based in Yokneam, Israel.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Lisa Levin]

  EZchip Semiconductor (NASDAQ: EZCH) shares climbed 5.80% to $23.53. The volume of EZchip Semiconductor shares traded was 635% higher than normal. EZchip Semiconductor's PEG ratio is 1.57.

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  EZchip Semiconductor (NASDAQ: EZCH) was also up, gaining 7.16 percent to $24.11 after a Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced a new product that would not threaten the company as previously thought. Equities Trading DOWN
  Shares of Cypress Semiconductor (NASDAQ: CY) were down 16.05 percent to $9.91 after the company lowered its Q3 forecast.

• [By Lisa Levin]

  EZchip Semiconductor (NASDAQ: EZCH) surged 9.38% to $26.13. The volume of EZchip Semiconductor shares traded 407% higher than normal. EZchip Semiconductor reported better-than-expected Q1 results.