Investors are always looking for new ideas. Now that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is trying to hit new highs and investors are pouring record inflows of capital into stocks, investors should remember that stocks basically have doubled from their lows in the recession. Analysts on Wall St. make routine calls that are the equivalent of Buy, Sell or Hold. Some of the calls come with great risk, and some come with great rewards to those analysts who are insightful enough to make strong calls that come true.

24/7 Wall St. has gone through a recent batch of analyst calls looking for those stocks that imply upside of 50% or more. We compiled a list of recent calls and recent developments where analysts expect certain stocks to rise by about 50% or much more. In this analysis we have shown the calls and compared them to consensus price targets from Thomson Reuters’ pool of analysts. We have also added color on these if applicable.

The list of potential 50% upside stocks includes the following companies: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX), Forestar Group Inc. (NYSE: FOR), GNC Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNC), Nanosphere Inc. (NASDAQ: NSPH), Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK), Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (NASDAQ: ONCY), Peabody Energy Corp. (NYSE: BTU), Penn Virginia Corp. (NYSE: PVA), Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM) and VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS).

It was just back on January 4, 2013, when the year was getting underway that we covered 12 other stocks that analysts expected would rise 50% to 100%, or even more. None of these stocks overlap due to 60 days having passed. More of those stocks are up than down, but we would show the risk versus reward here. One is up 62% and one is up 85% since that first list, but one stock is down 68% since then.

Investors always look for stocks to buy that can bring rewards. We would point out that most of these companies are not exactly considered your stable blue chip stocks you might find in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Another observation is that most do not pay dividends.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is a coincidental member of the 50% club and one we feel now has more caveats than merits. It has become so far out of favor that this what analysts are reduced to after months of having “long and wrong” calls. Shares just hit yet another 52-week low, and that is the only reason the stock made the list. It seems that it is just still too unpopular for analysts to lower their price targets on America’s darling of the past decade. At $422, the consensus price target is $630 and that leaves a hair under 50% upside. In late February, Needham trimmed its price target to $710 from $750, which is still more optimistic than the consensus. The current Street high is $888, although we would advise you not to hold your breath for that. Apple does pay a dividen,d but we would make a final observation about the potential upside here: a 50% gain would theoretically require roughly $200 billion worth of new fresh capital infusions, barring any market maker price gap-ups on certain days.

Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: ABX) has more than 50% implied upside, based on a recent call. Credit Suisse maintained its Outperform rating on February 26 but lowered the price target down to $45 from $49. Barrick’s share price of $30.79 gave it close to the 50% upside potential even at the time of the call, but the company offered up an operating cash flow model generating an asset value target revision to $58 from $67. While this is a call headed the wrong way, the price of less than $29 on Monday gets back above the 50% threshold and might be double if Credit Suisse is right on the cash flow analysis. Investors keep pounding gold mining stocks right now, and Barrick is at the lowest level since mid-2009.

Forestar Group Inc. (NYSE: FOR) was touted in Barron’s in the March 2 edition. While the shares rose more than 10% initially on the news, the $17.56 price at the time compared to a Wall St. consensus price target of $25.67, and that was a call for 46% upside as is just to the consensus. When Barron’s pointed out 40% upside at the time, they were being conservative. This real estate and natural resource player had a market value of less than $700 million and it raised $110 million in a convertible note sale just in February.

GNC Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNC) has two very bullish calls from analysts. We would caution that the consensus price target of $49.78 implies “only” about 22% from the $40.75 price of today. A boutique called Wellington Shields was shown in Barron’s to have made a call on Feb. 26 that its rating is Buy and it has a $67 price target. Then we received email communications from the manager of the Gabelli Focus Five Fund showing that his outlook puts a private market value up at $70 for the retailer of vitamins and supplements. That average upside on these two fresh targets is now close to 70% in implied upside.

Nanosphere Inc. (NASDAQ: NSPH) is small enough that it is almost at the extreme warning for investors due to only having a $118 million market cap. The stock was also down 4% at $2.13 late on Monday, but that was after shares rallied hard on an analyst call Friday that sent shares up 15% to $2.22. The team at Canaccord Genuity gave this a Buy rating in new coverage, and it offered up a $5 price target. The long and short of the matter is that this has implied upside of ore than 100%. Nanosphere has the Verigene System that enables genomic and protein testing on a single platform.

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) managed to find one analyst who was willing to raise the rating to Buy. Argus started coverage with a $6.00 price target on Feb. 27, and the prior price was $3.57. That is nearly 70% upside, based on that time, and even more now that shares have ticked down further. We would caution that the consensus price is far closer to today’s share price at $3.73, and even the 52-week high is only $5.57 for Nokia’s ADRs. What is amazing is that some analysts have even higher price targets than what Argus offered up. Also, in an effort to show both sides of the coin, we would point out that Deutsche Bank maintained a sell rating on Nokia on March 4. Argus sees low-end Lumia smartphones successfully competing on price with various Android models.

Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (NASDAQ: ONCY) is a small cap Canadian cancer-focused biotech that was just recently given an Overweight rating at Piper Jaffray & Co. But what stood out was the $6 price target, versus the $3.36 “as of date” and versus a $3.50 share price that same day. As we like to portray all sides of the coin, we would point out to investors and casual readers that Oncolytics just raised $32 million in a capital at the end of February, and Piper Jaffray was one of the joint book-running managers in that offering group. The analyst group that covers it has not made many calls and is too small for us to count as a true consensus, even though it is listed as above $7 by Thomson Reuters. That being said, the call here is for more than 70% upside to the $265 million market cap of today.

Peabody Energy Corp. (NYSE: BTU) is low and remains low despite some positive calls for a coal stock price recovery later in 2013. With shares down around $20, it was refreshing to see Barron’s speak of it as the largest and best positioned to win off of Asian demand rather than domestic. After taking a look at the consensus from Thomson Reuters, the actual consensus price target remains up around $32.50, and that is close to 60% upside based on current prices. We will leave it up to you to decide whether the price targets need to be refreshed, but it was very surprising to see that high of a consensus target. If you take the mean price target, that is even higher at $34 on the stock. Note that the actual call bias is barely favorable.

Penn Virginia Corp. (NYSE: PVA) was given an asset value range of $6 to $8 per share by Wells Fargo in recent days. The driving force is that the energy company’s non-Eagle-Ford Shale assets are not being valued at all and they may be shopped around. Penn Virgina was called attractive to MLPs and to financial buyers, versus the price of $4.07 at the time. This implies 50% to 100% upside, and we would note that the Thomson Reuters consensus price target is actually $6.61. Be advised that it is volatile, with a 52-week range of $3.92 to $7.74, and its market cap is just under $220 million now.

Sequenom Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM) may have had its share of woes with its genetic testing systems and corporate governance in the past, but Piper Jaffray thinks that is long in the rearview mirror. The firm hiked its rating coverage to Buy from Hold with a $6.50 price target on March 1. That was 58% upside at the time, versus the $4.11 close before the call. Even after two days of gains, his is 45% implied upside if the firm is correct. We would note that Thomson Reuters has a consensus price target of $6.89 here, but we cannot really say that Piper Jaffray is being “conservative” by only calling for 50% upside. Does it help if we show that Jefferies gave it a $7 target in late 2012?

VIVUS Inc. (NASDAQ: VVUS) somehow still has an upside consensus calling for 80% gains to the $18.28 price target. This is probably because the analysts are long and wrong here, and the 2% drop to $10.13 on Monday afternoon had the weight loss play at the low-end of the $9.86 to $31.21 trading range over the past 52-week period. In early February we saw that Leerink Swann started coverage with an Outperform rating and a $19 to $20 fair value. Shares were right around $13 at that time.

Here is how the prior list of stocks that could rise 50% or more did since then by ticker:

• CRZO 5% gain
• CNDO 62% gain
• EMKR 32% gain
• ETRM 68% loss
• EXAS 1% loss
• GALE 10% gain
• MX 7% loss
• OEDV 85% gain
• REGI 20% gain
• SPWR 35% gain
• SGYP 5% loss

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