Closing the Book on This Basket

Editor's Note: This was originally published as an alert at 8:30 a.m. EST on Dec. 28 to subscribers of TheStreet.com's Stocks Under $10.

On Dec. 8, we put together a basket of five speculative stocks that we believed would rally into the end of the year on the back of pending catalysts, and strong scores in our Alpha Factor, a measure of a stock's potential to make big moves as those catalysts are realized. We want to provide you readers with one final update on the progress of this basket, which has generated a 13.7% return this month.

We have suggested closing out two positions -- Aphton (APHT Quote) and E-Loan (EELN Quote) -- for double-digit gains, and last Thursday we suggested selling half of the Stemcells (STEM Quote) position for a 22.4% gain.

Monday, Stemcells rallied another 15% on news that the South Korean government will allow advanced embryonic stem-cell research. The stock closed at $3.99. We would use this strength to exit the position for a three-week gain of 34.8%. ...