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Fast-moving Jaguar Financial is breathing down the neck of Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM  ) , and if the BlackBerry maker isn’t careful, it could see a dramatic change in its board of directors and potentially management as early as three months from now.

Under Canadian securities laws, investors holding a 5% stake in a company — either individually or as a group — are allowed to call a special meeting, says Chris Makuch, vice president at proxy solicitation firm Georgeson.

And once a formal letter is sent to a company requesting a special meeting, the clock starts ticking and the process takes roughly 80 days to complete, notes Makuch, who works in Georgeson’s Canadian office.

For RIM, the stakes are huge. In Canada, there is no such thing as a staggered board like in the United States. That means all directors who sit on the board of a publicly traded Canadian company are subject to re-election every year, Makuch says. As a result, a successful shareholder activist could potentially capture a majority of the board seats with their opposing slate of directors.

Jaguar earlier this week noted it has 8% of RIM’s investors who support its call for new corporate governance and a transaction that could entail a sale of the company. More specially, Jaguar says it wants a “tech-oriented” board of directors, an independent chairman compared with the current two-in-a-box co-chairmen who also serve as the company’s co-CEOs, and it wants to replace the current CEOs with a “transformational” CEO.

“The action Jaguar has taken in announcing it has 8% support of RIM investors is a shot across the bow to show they have a position,” Makuch says.

While Jaguar has the prerequisite 5% needed to call a special meeting, that’s a long way off from securing a majority vote from RIM investors. And to get from point A to point B, the shareholder activist needs to demonstrate two key things, Makuch says.

One action is naming a reputable slate of directors. Jaguar may not have to look too far, especially if it wants to pull from an opposition slate previously presented by billionaire investor and activist Carl Icahn, who named a dissident slate to run against Yahoo!‘s (Nasdaq: YHOO  ) board following the busted buyout offer from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) .

It’s not always easy to find directors who want to serve on an opposition slate, but as Icahn has shown, it’s possible. Tech heads Mark Cuban, who founded Broadcast.com that was later sold to Yahoo!, and John Chapple, former CEO of Nextel Partners that is now part of Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S  ) , were part of Icahn’s dissident bench. Chapple would be particularly relevant to a Jaguar opposition board, given that he comes from the telecom world in which RIM once played such a dominant role.

The second key action Jaguar needs to take is delivering a strategy that galvanizes shareholders and is one that they could support, Makuch says.

Should Jaguar be successful in winning a majority of the board seats, expect to see the current CEOs ousted and replaced. But that’s asking RIM shareholders to take a large leap of faith that a group of directors new to the company would be fully versed in its operations within a short time frame to make a smart choice on a new CEO.

And by the same token, it may take time for a new group of directors to figure out if a sale of RIM makes sense, versus a sale of its patent portfolio or spinoff of some of its operations.

In the meantime, competitors like Apple with its iPhone, and Motorola Mobility with its Android-based phones by Google are taking market share.

Jaguar, however, has had success in moving shareholders into action. In 2008, Jaguar opposed HudBay Minerals’ multimillion-dollar buyout of Lundin Mining. In raising opposition, the companies eventually terminated the buyout, citing shareholder resistance.

Baked into that controversy, another HudBay investor, SRM Global Master Fund Limited Partnership, had sought to unseat HudBay’s board of directors and was successful as the preliminary proxy count came in. In announcing the new board of directors, the SRM slate named a new CEO as the interim CEO voluntarily stepped down.

Says Makuch: “[RIM] is not the first rodeo for Jaguar.”

Indeed. So, RIM investors, hold on tight for what will undoubtedly be a wild ride in the coming weeks and months. Don’t be surprised to see RIM’s board suddenly separate the chairman-CEO role and assign an independent director to the chairman’s role. And look for signs that an executive search firm has been hired to quietly test the waters for potential CEO replacements at the mobile device maker.

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Wall Street experts surveyed by CNN are largely “throwing in the towel” on hope for a stock market rebound and now expect the SP to close at 1253 points, less than one percent below the year’s start.

CNN Money reports, “investment strategists and money managers expect the SP 500 (SPX) to claw back almost about 5% before the ball drops in Times Square, but that still won’t be enough to end the year in black.”

The news that the market could end on near-equal footing with the years’ opening is not necessarily bad news — it could be worse — but these expectations show “bullishness from earlier this year has faded. Even as recently as August, strategists were forecasting the SP 500 to end 2011 up 7%, with only one survey participant thinking the SP would finish in the red.”

One of the reasons investors are changing their tune is an increasingly dismal outlook for the fourth quarter. The end-of-year shopping season is one of the strongest for the economy, and while it may cause an uptick in the markets, it is unlikely to change the minds of investors who currently lack confidence in the market.

Of course, all of this negativity could present an opportunity for contrarian investors who often see excessive pessimism as a signal to buy in.

Are you looking for contrarian ideas?
The stocks mentioned below are bucking the trend — they have all seen an increase in the current year EPS analyst projection over the last 30 days. For each of these stocks, the price change has lagged the change in EPS projections, indicating that these stocks may still have to price in some good news.

In addition, all of these companies have seen short covering over the last month (i.e., short-sellers are reducing bets that these stocks are going to decline).

Short-sellers and Wall Street analysts think these stocks are expected to see more upside over the coming weeks, contradicting the bearish sentiment expressed by recent surveys. Do you think any of these stocks worth a closer look?

Use this list as a starting point for your own analysis. (Click here to access free, interactive tools to analyze these ideas.)

1. Western Refining (NYSE: WNR  ) : Operates as an independent crude oil refiner and marketer of refined products in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and the Mid-Atlantic region. Shares shorted have decreased from 16.92M to 16.31M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 1.14% of the company’s float of 53.73M shares. The EPS estimate for the company’s current year increased from 3.13 to 3.43 over the last 30 days, an increase of 9.58%. This increase came during a time when the stock price changed by -5.03% (from 16.89 to 16.04 over the last 30 days).

2. Cal-Maine Foods (Nasdaq: CALM  ) : Engages in the production, grading, packaging, marketing, and distribution of shell eggs primarily in the southeastern, southwestern, mid-western, and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. Shares shorted have decreased from 3.35M to 3.16M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 1.41% of the company’s float of 13.50M shares. The EPS estimate for the company’s current year increased from 2.25 to 2.43 over the last 30 days, an increase of 8.%. This increase came during a time when the stock price changed by -0.25% (from 32.32 to 32.24 over the last 30 days).

3. Calpine (NYSE: CPN  ) : Calpine Corporation, an independent wholesale power generation company, owns and operates natural gas-fired and geothermal power plants in North America. Shares shorted have decreased from 21.05M to 13.58M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 2.7% of the company’s float of 276.36M shares. The EPS estimate for the company’s current year increased from 0.2 to 0.21 over the last 30 days, an increase of 5.%. This increase came during a time when the stock price changed by -1.53% (from 14.34 to 14.12 over the last 30 days).

4. Atwood Oceanics (NYSE: ATW  ) : Engages in offshore drilling, and the completion of exploratory and developmental oil and gas wells. Shares shorted have decreased from 4.91M to 3.97M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 1.66% of the company’s float of 56.50M shares. The EPS estimate for the company’s current year increased from 4.02 to 4.05 over the last 30 days, an increase of 0.75%. This increase came during a time when the stock price changed by -2.43% (from 39.88 to 38.91 over the last 30 days).

5. Spreadtrum Communications (Nasdaq: SPRD  ) : Operates as a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develops, and markets baseband processor and RF transceiver solutions for wireless communications and mobile television markets. Shares shorted have decreased from 5.54M to 4.86M over the last month, a decrease which represents about 2.11% of the company’s float of 32.19M shares. The EPS estimate for the company’s current year increased from 2.26 to 2.28 over the last 30 days, an increase of 0.88%. This increase came during a time when the stock price changed by -1.1% (from 20.09 to 19.87 over the last 30 days).

Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in analyst ratings over the last two years for the stocks mentioned above. Analyst ratings sourced from Zacks Investment Research.

Kapitall’s Rebecca Lipman does not own any of the shares mentioned above. Data sourced from Finviz.

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General Dynamics (NYSE: GD  ) carries $14.8 billion of goodwill and other intangibles on its balance sheet. Sometimes goodwill, especially when it’s excessive, can foreshadow problems down the road. Could this be the case with General Dynamics?

Before we answer that, let’s look at what could go wrong.

AOL blows up
In early 2002, AOL Time Warner was trading for $66.27 per share.

It had $209 billion of assets on its balance sheet, and $128 billion of that was in the form of goodwill and other intangible assets. Goodwill is simply the difference between the price paid for a company during an acquisition and the net assets of the acquired company. The $128 billion of goodwill in this case was created when AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000.

The problem with inflating your net assets with goodwill is that it can — being intangible after all — go away if the acquisition or merger doesn’t create the amount of value that was expected. That’s what happened in AOL Time Warner’s case. It had to write off most of the goodwill over the next few months, and one year later that line item had shrunk to $37 billion. Investors punished the stock along the way, sending it down to $27.04 — or nearly a 60% loss.

In his fine book It’s Earnings That Count, Hewitt Heiserman explains the AOL situation and how two simple metrics can help minimize your risk of owning a company that may blow up like this. Let’s see how General Dynamics holds up using his two metrics.

Intangible assets ratio
This ratio shows us the percentage of total assets made up by goodwill and other intangibles. Heiserman says he views anything over 20% as worrisome, “because management might be overpaying for the acquisition or acquisitions that gave rise to the goodwill.”

General Dynamics has an intangible assets ratio of 45%.

This is well above Heiserman’s threshold, and you should keep a close eye on just how the company is fueling its growth. It’s also useful to compare it to tangible book value, which I explain below.

Tangible book value
Tangible book value is simply what remains after subtracting goodwill and other intangibles from shareholders’ equity (also known as book value). If this is not a positive value, Heiserman advises you to run away because such companies may “lack the balance sheet muscle to protect themselves in a recession or from better-financed competitors.”

General Dynamics’s tangible book value is -$908 million, so we have another yellow flag.

By the way, I asked Heiserman about the tendency for some large cap blue chips — names like Procter Gamble, IBM, and Altria — to have a high intangible assets ratio and negative tangible book value. He says this can be OK, provided the company has 1) modest or no net debt, 2) persistent and rising levels of free cash flow, and 3) stock buybacks at a discount to intrinsic value.

Foolish bottom line
To recap, here are General Dynamics’s numbers, as well as a bonus look at a few other companies in its industry:

Company

Intangible Assets Ratio

Tangible Book Value (millions)

General Dynamics

45%

($908)

Boeing (NYSE: BA  )

11%

($3,357)

Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT  )

27%

($6,327)

Textron (NYSE: TXT  )

11%

$1,523

Data provided by SP Capital IQ.

If you own General Dynamics, or any other company that fails one of these checks, make sure you understand the business model and management’s objectives. You can never base an entire investment thesis on one or two metrics, but there is a yellow flag here. I’ll help you keep a close eye on these ratios over the next few quarters by updating them soon after each earnings report.

It’s Almost Time to Buy – A sudden correction and hyper volatility have spooked investors. This is fantastic news. A once-in-a-generation buying opportunity is at hand. Do you know exactly what to buy and how much? Here’s a solution.

Follow along as a former hedge fund manager actively manages a $1 million stock portfolio in real time. This is the first and ONLY opportunity this year, by invitation only. Claim your no-obligation invitation – plus a never-seen report revealing “5 Handpicked Stocks for the Coming Bull Market.” It’s free to individual investors for a limited time. Enter your email address in the box below and click the button now.