Every investor is interested in finding out about the hottest big money stocks, but how would one go about getting this information? Though it is not necessary to be an expert in financial matters to understand how to pick a good stock, there are many factors that you can follow that indicate a stock that is set to soar with big moves.

The first tenet to remember for finding big money stocks is to look at the buying patterns of institutional investors. Institutional investors are those who manage money for large institutions, such as cities, school systems, hospitals and corporations. They invest just like individual investors by buying stocks, bonds and mutual funds. However, the capital institutional investors inject into the market with equity purchases--or remove when they sell a particular security--has significant impact on the attractiveness of individual investments. Thus, if a multi-billion-dollar institutional investor likes a particular company, it is soon to see a jump in price.

Hot stocks are generally backed by strong, reputable companies that have solid balance sheets. There are several financial factors that are important to consider when investigating any big money stocks. First, strong sales growth, which is absolutely critical for winning stocks, mostly due to Wall Street's bias toward strong sale growth. This means that strong sales growth figures can keep a company stock strong even in the face of less than stellar earnings releases.

An important factor in choosing tomorrow's winners is forecasted earning growth. There are currently stocks with fantastic growth to price/earnings ratios that institutional investors are attracted to, thus putting more buying pressure on these stocks. Since earnings momentum is slowing down for the overall stock market, earnings momentum is vital for all big money stocks. Stocks that can show strong momentum in earnings benefit from high pressure institutional buying. With stocks that are poised for big moves profits should not slow down.

The growth-to-price/earnings ratio of any given stock is becoming more and more important in the selection of winning stocks. We can see this by looking at the fact that commodity and energy stocks have had great earnings growth, but continue to have among the lowest P/E ratios on the Street. Due to the booming economy in China many of the world's commodities like oil, copper, coal or steel are in great demand.

Surprise earnings are another important factor when choosing hot stocks in the small and mid-cap sector, especially since stocks that exceed expectations create greater demand and additional buying pressure. All of these things are important for big money stocks, but there are other factors to consider as well when selecting your stocks, certain factors such as improved cash flow (often resulting in increased dividends), return on equity and expansion on profit margin.