(FORTUNE Magazine) – One expert tells you to buy shares with low price-to-earnings ratios. Another swears by companies with high earnings growth. Still others tout high yields, or price momentum, or low price-to-book ratios, or small market capitalizations. And on and on...If the search for stocks with the best total returns is giving you a headache, here's some relief.

The number crunchers at Ford Investor Services, a research firm in San Diego, studied 33 different ways of predicting stock performance. Fortune identified the five most effective. The top stocks within those five categories produced a ten-year annualized return of 16.4% or more, significantly above the average 14.4% return of the 2,200 stocks that Ford evaluated. Without further ado, here are the five best stock-forecasting techniques and some winning stocks to look at:

PRICE/EARNINGS RATIO. The top companies measured this way-their stock price is divided by earnings per share over the past four quarters, a number most newspapers carry--averaged a ten-year total return of 18%. Chrysler (which traded recently at $42.63), Ford Motor ($28.25), and General Motors ($45.63) show up as winners largely because many investors have soured on cyclical stocks as the economy has slowed. All these automakers have attractively low P/E multiples of 7 or less. Insurer Fremont General ($25.50), which specializes in workers' compensation, has a P/E of exactly 7. Aggressive investors might also want to gamble on Sands Regent ($6), a casino-hotel operator in Reno. It has problems (see table), but the stock sells at a P/E of 5.

PRICE-TO-CASH-FLOW RATIO. The winners in this category--the ratio gives you an idea of how much cash a company has to pay dividends or buy back stock--scored an average 16.7% total return. Value Line Investment Survey does the tough math for you, calculating cash flow per share for hundreds of stocks, adding earnings to depreciation and amortization expense and dividing the total by the number of shares outstanding. Supercomputer maker Cray Research earns a medal among this low price-to-cash-flow crowd. At $23.38, its stock sells at 3.9 times cash flow, partly because of weak demand for high-end supercomputers. But analyst David Kerdell of Oppenheimer & Co. expects Cray's sales and profits to rebound in 1996, helped by new, lower-end products. He thinks the stock will hit $35 in the next year. Borg-Warner Security, the nation's largest provider of uniformed guards and other services, sells for $7.25, 1.6 times cash flow. Jeffrey Kessler of Lehman Brothers says pricing pressures have handcuffed the guard business. But he points out that the Oklahoma City bombing has greatly increased awareness of the need for security. That should help Borg-Warner. PRICE MOMENTUM. The top scorers in this category posted a ten-year annual return of 18.5%. Ford's formula for computing a company's stock price momentum in the past year penalizes stocks that have recently gone up sharply, a sign the stock will underperform, Ford found. You can find a momentum proxy in Value Line's ranking of a stock's timeliness, which is based on price and earnings momentum.

The clear winner in this category: First Team Sports ($22.75). The company makes in-line skates and is capturing ever more share in this growing market. First Team's fans include Louis Navellier, publisher of the investment newsletter MPT Review. He says the company's explosive growth means that it will exceed analysts' earnings estimates. Grist Mill also fits the bill. It makes cereals sold under supermarket labels at prices about 35% less than brand-name competitors, notes Piper Jaffray analyst George Dahlman. He thinks the $9.63 stock will hit $15 within 18 months. EARNINGS TREND. This group's top stocks returned 16.4% annually over ten years. The predictor is based on a Ford formula that singles out companies whose earnings are accelerating or whose profit declines are slowing. Several paper companies make the grade, thanks to soaring paper prices. At the top of the list is Bowater, a large producer of newsprint. But is the stock, at $38, near a 12-month high, set to tumble? No, says Mark Rogers of Prudential Securities. "The paper business is early in its cycle," he says. He thinks the stock will rise into the "upper 40s" in the next year or so. Another winner in this category is Empi, a maker of medical devices, including electrode patches that are placed on a patient's skin to reduce pain. Empi's earnings have improved in part because CEO Joseph Laptewicz, who took over last October, has refocused the company on its core customers, physical therapists, says Dain Bosworth analyst Rachael Scherer. She thinks the stock, now $15.25, will reach $20 in the next year.

PRICE GAIN, PAST YEAR. The winners here produced a ten-year total return of 18.2%. The percentage gain in a company's stock price over the previous year turns out to be an effective forecasting tool of future returns. This group's current stars are technology stocks, on a tear since late 1994. That's why many analysts expect them to fall this summer. However, Gerald Fleming of the brokerage Sutro still recommends Tencor Instruments, tops in this category with a 349% gain in the last year. Tencor makes devices that detect defects on semiconductor wafers. Fleming says the stock, at $73.50, should hit $92 next year. The strong market for semiconductors also sent the shares of Helix Technology up 246% in the past year. The company's low-temperature and vacuum technology products are used by chipmakers. Analyst Fred Wolf of Adams Harkness & Hill expects the stock, now $35.50, to rise as Helix customers like Applied Materials thrive.

Clearly, the winning stock strategies identified by the Ford survey give comfort to disciples of value investing--and shivers to growth groupies. Says Timothy Alward, a chartered financial analyst who worked on the study: "Historical and projected earnings growth rates haven't worked very well." Nor has picking stocks based on a company's historical return on equity, the study found. "ROE is something used by a lot of investment advisers," adds Alward. "Its predictive significance is really muddy."

To come up with total returns, the study used a so-called rebalancing strategy: This means you rerank stocks quarterly, say, by various measurements such as P/E. You sell those that no longer rank high and buy those that do. The Ford study does not take into account the substantial transaction costs you would incur if you traded that frequently.

LAST CALL FOR THE BOND RALLY

If you're still looking around for ways to join this year's spectacular bond rally, you are woefully late to the dance--but at least the band is still playing.

Besides, you're not the only latecomer. Legions of investors, including many of Wall Street's pros, knew that the bond market was steadily trending upward but did not expect the recent explosive surge. The 30-year Treasury bond jumped nearly seven points, or about $70 per $1,000 of face value, in the first half of May. That's roughly equivalent to a 300-point rise in the Dow!

The most promising investments left in the fixed-income sector right now are mortgage-backed securities. Like Ginnie Mae's 81/2% 30-year bonds, mortgage-backeds have lagged in the current rally. As the market took off, high-coupon mortgage bonds, which are backed by pools of residential mortgages, were dumped by institutional investors who feared that dropping interest rates would encourage homeowners to prepay their loans by refinancing at lower rates. Rising prepayments would jeopardize the cash flow behind these securities. By mid-May, Ginnie Maes and similar mortgage paper from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac) were trading at wider interest rate spreads over comparable Treasuries. Meanwhile, the lion's share of the bond market had seen spreads tighten to Treasuries as everything got bid up. Ginnie Mae's 81/2% bonds were at 110 basis points (or hundredths of a percentage point) over Treasuries. Only weeks before, the spread was roughly 90.

Says Peter Van Dyke, manager of T. Rowe Price's Spectrum Income bond fund: "Mortgages have been pushed to very attractive levels. But we haven't seen a rise in prepayments yet, and refinancings are at very low levels."

Built into the selloff of mortgage securities is a belief that the economy is weaker than anyone realized. If the economy proves to be more robust in the second half of the year, as many economists are predicting, there will probably be a major correction in the bond market. But that will mean a big rally in mortgage securities because interest rates will start to climb again and fears of heavy prepayments will diminish.

The best way to capture the enormous upside potential in mortgage bonds is to buy into a Ginnie Mae mutual fund. Among those with the best recent track records are the Vanguard F/I GNMA fund, which, according to Morningstar, had an annualized total return of 9.26% over the past five years. Other high performers are the Smith Breeden Intermediate Duration Government fund, the Dreyfus Investors GNMA fund, and the USAA Investment GNMA fund. Those three have the fattest returns over the past three years.

One of the last plays in the corporate sector is the bank and finance company issues. Their spreads average about 15 basis points higher than comparably rated industrial bonds. The current rally has tightened spreads for most bank paper by five to ten basis points, but they still offer extra yield.

Van Dyke says that even with the tightening over the past few weeks, AAA-rated credit-card receivables-backed notes still offer 58 to 60 basis points over Treasuries. He is buying Citibank's credit-card securities and those of Standard Credit Card. Parts of the Brady bond market for developing-country debt are also catching the eye of fund managers. But don't try tackling the Brady market directly. Instead, invest in funds like the G.T. Global High-Income funds.

- RICHARD D. HYLTON