A 1-in-100 Investor

The first 100 days in office set the tone for any new president. Motley Fool CAPS also keeps an eye on how investors do in their first 100 days. Some of our best -- we call them All-Stars -- have achieved scores of 100 on stock selections in their first 100 days on CAPS. Since data shows that the best stocks to buy and sell have gotten top ratings, might we also assume that when the best players rate the best stocks, there is a correlation?

One of our highest-rated CAPS members is cipostripes, who sports a near-perfect 99.98 member rating. A member since September 2006, cipostripes currently has 118 active picks on CAPS out of 138 stock picks made. Achieving just shy of 80% accuracy, cipostripes has also attracted 916 "groupies," CAPS players who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites.

Here are a few of this top member's most recent stock selections and how they were rated.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS. *Price when call was made. Current score is how many points a player is beating (lagging) the S&P 500 index from the time of the call.

A silver lining
cipostripes has been somewhat somnambulant of late, but has awakened to determine that precious metals will rule the day -- for the immediate future, at least. Moreover, rather than focus on top miners like Barrick Gold (NYSE:ABX) or Hecla Mining (NYSE:HL), cipostripes is looking to the junior miners for possibilities.

CAPS members socialconscious, however, thinks that may be a risky strategy, particularly when it comes to a junior gold miner like Western Goldfields:

IMHO the Market didn't like most juniors when gold was high UNLESS they had actual not speculative essay proof of gold that was being mined. Now gold is down and they will fall with it IMHO

For a junior silver miner like Apex Silver Mines, CAPS member markdeuitch thinks the risk lies with the potential for the government of Bolivia to expropriate the mines. However, markdeuitch still sees a lot of upside in the company:

Problem is that this "unlocked value" could all go away if Bolivia decides it's a national asset. What are the odds? The market is saying, there is a pretty good chance that shareholder's of Apex don't own those silver assets but the good people, or more likely the government of Bolivia does instead. Not a good way to attract capital to your country, but it gets votes.

Getting tarnished
For CAPS All-Star member goldminingXpert, a better bet might be a company like Taseko Mines, which he calls a "Fine little outfit that has gotten drubbed without good cause."

Back in June, EMFP outlined some of the reasons that might make Taseko succeed beyond others:

[Taseko] has a lower P/E ratio than comparable stocks in this sector, has shown consistent growth, good management and a potential for a huge increase in mining potential if permits are granted for it's Prosperity property. Even without Prosperity, with the upgrades to the Gibraltar mine, it is still poised to continue growth of revenue and profits.

Maybe an even better way to play the gold mines is through an exchange-traded note like DB Double Gold Long, which seeks to replicate twice the daily performance of the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity index. CAPS member MoneyMongol finds the rally in the dollar's value only a temporary roadblock:

I am long term bullish on Gold. There is downside risk based on the rally of the USD but the economic issues facing the U.S. are severe and hardly over. There is global inflation and historically gold has been a safe haven. I consider the pull back in gold & silver prices a gift.

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have made their mark, but it pays to start your own research on these stocks in Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made, all from a stock's CAPS page.

As hockey great Wayne Gretzky once noted, "You miss 100% of the shots you never take." At Motley Fool CAPS, every investor's opinion counts, and since it's free to sign up, why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?