Top Rocket Stocks for Week of Dec. 24

Updated from Dec. 24 at 10:06 a.m. EST

Holiday-shortened trading weeks such as this one are generally thinly traded and tend to be best suited for short-term trades. With a shortened week, volatility generally increases, while overall market volume decreases as people leave work early and try to enjoy the last days of the year.

Currently, the "Christmas Itch" is in full swing. This is the tendency for media pundits to start telling us that this Christmas season will be slower than the rest. Despite all the micro issues within the economy, the "Christmas Itch" seems to happen each and every year, and each year it's always a record-breaking year in terms of sales.

This week's Rocket Stocks portfolio is mostly focused on snapback plays into the new year.

But before I make any recommendations, let's see how last week's Rocket Stock picks fared in another rough market.

• Timberland (TBL): Up 9.7% for the week.
• Columbia Sportswear (COLM): Up 5% for the week.
• Nike (NKE): Up 3.5% for the week.
• Best Buy (BBY), a midweek addition, ending the week up 1.7% from Wednesday.
• Genesis Lease (GLS), another midweek addition, ending the week up 1.4% from Wednesday.
• AT&T (T): Up 1.1% for the week.
• Adobe Systems (ADBE): A midweek sell, up as much as 2% and finishing the week up 1%.
• Goldman Sachs (GS): Ending the week essentially flat.
• DynCorp (DCP): Up as much as 2%, but ending the week down 2.8%.
• Security Capital Assurance (SCA): Up as much as 17.4% on the week, but finished down 4.8%.
• Sirius (SIRI): Down 5% for the week.
• Evergreen Solar (ESLR): Down 6.8% for the week.

No let's look at some of the picks from this week's Rocket Stocks portfolio.

First up is ValueClick (VCLK), which has been rumored to be a possible buyout candidate for Google (GOOG) or Yahoo! (YHOO) for some time now as it provides advertising campaigns and other e-commerce advertising that may fit nicely with an Internet search company.

Late Thursday, U.S. regulators approved the Google-DoubleClick merger, thus making ValueClick among the last such independent companies standing. I suspect that any potential acquirer of ValueClick was waiting for the outcome of the Google-DoubleClick deal before they made an offer.

ValueClick could easily fetch a $4 billion offer from Google, Yahoo! or even Microsoft (MSFT).

1 2 3 Next › Last »