Zacks.com featured expert Kevin Matras highlights: Houston American Energy Corp., LogMein, Inc., MicroStrategy Inc., RealPage, Inc. and Sina Corp.

Chicago, IL – October 4, 2011 - Stocks in this week's article include Houston American Energy Corp. (AMEX: HUSA - Snapshot Report), LogMein, Inc. (NASDAQ: LOGM - Snapshot Report), MicroStrategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR - Snapshot Report), RealPage, Inc. (NASDAQ: RP - Snapshot Report) and Sina Corp. (NASDAQ: SINA - Analyst Report). Kevin Matras pulls out his Toxic Stocks bearish screen that gained over 120% in the bear market of 2008, and shows how you might use it this year.

Screen of the Week written by Kevin Matras of Zacks Investment Research:

2008 was one of the worst bear market years in recent history. And there was almost no place to hide.

To be sure, there were still bullish strategies that made money, but it was a brutal sell-off and almost nothing was safe.

Back then, the short-sellers cleaned up.

With the market now approaching bear territory once again, it's time to pull out a screen I was running back then. And it's called Toxic Stocks.

The main theme of this screen is to find overvalued companies.

Granted, even undervalued companies were getting hammered then (not to mention downright great companies too), but usually the best opportunities for short-selling are the ones that are overvalued on valuations, underperforming on growth and are receiving downward earnings estimate revisions.

So how did it do?

In 2008, this strategy, using a 4-week rebalancing period, produced an average compounded return of over 120% while the market plummeted nearly -40%.

In fact, even if you didn't start trading this strategy until the official beginning of the bear market, which began in July of 2008 (a bear market isn't officially called until it goes down by -20% or more), the strategy still produced an average annual return of over 70%.

And it's not too late to consider this one now.

For the rest of this Screen of the Week article, please visit Zacks.com at: http://www.zacks.com/commentary/19010/

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Read the full analyst report on HUSA

Read the full analyst report on LOGM

Read the full analyst report on MSTR

Read the full analyst report on RP

Read the full analyst report on SINA