Morningstar Analyst Research: The Week in Stocks

Are you a bargain hunter? Do you pick over the racks at stores searching for $99 Hugo Boss suits, haggle with car dealers down to the fraction of a penny, and get edgy if you witness someone throw out the Sunday paper without clipping the coupons?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting value for your money--especially when it comes to stocks. And with the market in a months-long funk, there are a lot of bargains to go around. But picking out the winners from the losers can be tricky. After all, just like a "Rolex" sold by a guy on a street corner, some stocks deserve to be cheap.

That’s where Morningstar comes in. Our analysts provide research on hundreds of stocks and bring dozens more under coverage every week. We also keep our analyses up-to-date to help you decide whether an investment is a great deal or a waste of money. So in this week’s roundup, we’re highlighting a group of new--or freshly updated--stock analyses from a variety of industries that look cheap in one way or another. A word of warning: We don’t think that all of them are winners so read on to find out which are headed up, down, or nowhere.

• You can supersize this company's food, but its stock price is starting to look smaller than a slider from rival burger-maker White Castle. Do McDonald’s (MCD) shares look like a steal worthy of the Hamburglar or will buying this stock make you Grimace? Click here to find out.
• No, they won’t let you ride on one of their destroyers or fete you in a Gulf Stream jet (well, maybe if you buy enough stock), but General Dynamics’s (GD) balance sheet looks as sturdy as a tank. Will the "D" in "Dubya" stand for more defense?
• High prices at the pump have made you rue the day you bought that gas-gulping SUV, but ExxonMobil (XOM) keeps rolling in the green from sales of black gold. So why aren’t its shares gushing higher than a freshly tapped reserve?
• The maker of Titleist golf balls has a stock that looks stuck in a sand trap. Can Fortune Brands (FO) chip an eagle on its next hole to mount a comeback or will buying this stock make you later beg for a mulligan?
• Bungled mergers and bad loans have battered First Union . But will the new CEO’s turnaround plans keep you laughing all the way to the bank?
• Funny how the term "Internet explosion" once described the rush to the Web and now refers to all the dot-coms that have gone ka-boom. Amazon’s (AMZN) stock has floated downstream with the rest of them. Find out if this company can navigate an environment that’s looking more treacherous than the river it’s named after.

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