The Great Range of 2011 is unprecedented in its details but simply an example of what's been happening in stocks for more than a decade. If you're frustrated by the S&P500's bouncing between 1,100 and 1,220 this year it'll really bum you out when I point out that the S&P first closed at about 1,100 in March of 1998. Sorry.

The same old thing clearly isn't working for the buy & hold camp; what's needed is a different metric or way of looking at a company. Something beyond the normal P/E ratios, growth rate, stated cash on hand, and book value. Breakout turned to Jeff Saut -the long-time ace investment strategist for Raymond James- to tell us how he's finding hidden gems a little off the beaten path. Saut says he's been relying on two metrics in his analysis: Intangible capital and embedded options.

"Intangible capital" are assets possessed by a company that aren't recorded on the balance sheet; not cash or acquisitions with stated goodwill, but assets developed in-house which have become valuable businesses in and of themselves.

"Lots of cos are creating intangible capital in this country and it's not being measured," says Saut. He uses Apple's (AAPL) iTunes and Amazon's (AMZN) search engine as examples. Saut says this "unique lens" can help lead to better stock investments. Specifically:

Tangoe (TNGO): a company involved in the new Lifecyle Communications software space, giving new solutions for ordering and billing as well as telecommunications. Saut's firm has used the software extensively, realizing huge productivity gains. If investing in what you know works, he has a winner.

Nuance (NUAN): Another one that Saut has used himself. Nuance provides the long-awaited and perpetually hyped software that converts speech into text. "Speak into a computer and it puts it into text." If it works this is another company that's created an asset that is difficult to recognized on the balance sheet, perhaps leaving it under appreciated by Wall Street.

Another tool Saut uses effectively is embedded options. The idea here is that an asset, in this case on the books, represents a "call" for the company. In other words it's more or less dormant at the moment but has the potential to reap huge windfalls. An example Saut has used on the show before is EV Energy Partners (EVEP). Saut told us in April that EVP had huge unrecognized assets in shale and was trading at $54 a share at the time. Today it's at $72, a 33% gain versus a 9% decline in the S&P.

Do I have your attention yet? Good. Here are Saut's current embedded option plays:

Resolute Energy Corp (REN): Saut cites nearly 200 acres of untapped resources currently being valued at $0. If you put a $2,000 value on "all that which is underdeveloped resources and you've got north of $6 a share in embedded value," Saut says. The stock is currently around $12.

Linn Energy (LINE): Another prior name Saut has mentioned, Linn has "a 7% cost of capital and is growing organically at better than 30% per year." The company also has hedged 96% of it's exposure to the energy resources it taps, meaning management and shareholders can focus on core operations without getting whipsawed by crazy commodities fluctuations.

These aren't one-stop-shopping names. No one should be simply plugging them into their portfolio just because Saut has made viewers money in the past. Doing so would defeat the purpose. What you can do is use these names as a starting point for their research and this prism as an underutilized tool for looking at stocks.

There's nothing new under the sun in analysis but new spins on the old can make you money.