Our Top Stock Idea

Each week, Motley Fool editors cull a top stock idea from the pitches made on CAPS, the Motley Fool's 180,000-member free investing community. Want your idea considered for this series? Make a compelling pitch on CAPS with a minimum length of 400 words. Want to follow our weekly picks? Subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

Up this week is a green-thumb rating for Nokia (NYS: NOK) .

Sources: S&P Capital IQ, Yahoo! Finance, and Motley Fool CAPS.

This Week's Pitch:
I'm doubling down here against my better judgement.

Obviously high risk, but the draw of the crazy high reward if even a FEW things start going right with Nokia, is too tempting for me to avoid.

They will likely never catch Apple, but they don't have to. In fact, just anecdotally, online, you see almost as many Apple haters as you do fanboys. Even a good (doesn't have to be great), Windows 8 phone from Nokia would possibly be enticing enough for Apple haters to jump on board. And the pre-press hype is very good for Win 8.

Add to that a Nokia Win 8 tablet (again, for those who hate the closed Apple system, and have not already gone Droid for whatever reason) to launch in June, and you have some potential for a turnaround here.

PROS:
- Nokia has a ton of resources (like patents, app divisions, etc) to liquidate if they need cash
- Win 8 is everything. How good it is, and specifically how good its mobile OS is will likely make or break Nokia. Initial reports of the OS are very positive.
- No one is talking about this except in the photography blogs, but Nokia just release the best camera phone ever (40 megapixels, with the ability to optically zoom, for DSLR like images). If they implement this amazing, proprietary technology into a decent, non Symbian based phone....wow. People on DPReview already excited about it in its current Symbian iteration.

CONS:
- Whew. Lots here. Very rocky launch of the highly touted Lumia 900
- Cash burn a concern when patent library runs out
- Will not regain status previously enjoyed, but can probably only hope to compete/survive at this point
- Concerns about [Microsoft] partnership...will Nokia actually reap benefits of a successful Win8 mobile launch, or will most of the profits head to Redmond?
-I'm not as concerned about Apple competition, as I am with Google, in terms of competing for the dollars of smartphone buyers. Most people that don't want to buy into Apple for whatever reason, are probably already using Droid. Why would they switch to MS8?

Anyhoo, I fully realize not a lot to like here from an investment standpoint, and a lot of red flags that should be screaming "stay away!"...but again...because of the size of the company (not logical, I know), the perhaps overzealous selling of the stock in such a short time (I do believe it wayyy oversold), the fact that they are still very viable in the emerging markets with their cheaper product lines...and the upcoming potential of Win8...I just can't walk away.

I guess I will either burn with them, or bask in the glory of a turnaround that at best will leave them competitive/surviving.

Foolish bottom line
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The article Our Top Stock Idea originally appeared on Fool.com.

The Motley Fool is investors writing for investors.Dan Dzombakdid not have a position in any of the companies mentioned in this article. Pitches must be compelling, made in the past 30 days, and be at least 400 words. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple, Microsoft, and Google.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of Microsoft, Google, and Apple.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended creating a synthetic covered call position in Microsoft.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended creating a bull call spread position in Apple. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days.

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