Bargains in Wall Street's Growth-Stock Rejects

In the case of Amgen, he notes that the stock is trading like a low-growth pharmaceutical company because of safety fears about its anemia drug. Barish thinks Wall Street has overreacted and is ignoring all the good prospects in the company's pipeline.

On Intel, he thinks Wall Street is overestimating the threat from smaller rival AMD(AMD Quote). Barish argues that Intel has been paying the price for strategy and design blunders made years ago under the last CEO. Those are fixable, he says, and he believes that the current CEO, Paul Otellini, has been taking the right steps. The fund manager thinks Intel's extraordinary engineering and manufacturing strengths will win through, and he expects the profit margins, and the shares, to bounce back sharply toward their historic ranges.

As for Home Depot, Barish thinks worries over the housing slump have left a great stock looking cheap on about 13 times "depressed" earnings. His bet: Those earnings rise to $4 by 2009, while the multiple recovers to at least 16 times.

Which could send today's $40 share above $60.

It's easy to be skeptical. By definition, if these were already popular stories on Wall Street, they would already be reflected in the share prices. But if you just want to go with the crowd, why aren't you in an index fund?