HOW to PLAY it

perhaps any U.s. manufacturer of a mass-market item—car, fridge or phone—is destined to succumb someday to cheap foreign labor. so if you want to make a bet on american industrial strength, find a company that makes weird stuff in small volumes. examples: actuant (atu), astec industries (aste), crane (cr), nordson (ndsn), roper Technologies (rop) and wabtec (wab). their product lines are complex but include, respectively, turbocharger valves, whole-tree chippers, sewage pumps, goo dispensers, hardness testers and freight-train parts. their customers have exacting demands that can sometimes be met by only one particular model of one brand. William Baldwin is Forbes’ Investment Strategies columnist.