Stocks the Top Investors Are Betting Against

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It takes a lot of guts to short a stock. By hoping the share price will decline, your best-case scenario is that the company goes bankrupt -- a 100% gain. On the other hand, if the stock miraculously rebounds, your potential losses are infinite. Put simply, if you're going to make a short call, you'd better be sure you're right.

Using Motley Fool CAPS, the Fool's 115,000-plus-member investing community, we can see which stocks are receiving the greatest percentage change in "underperform" calls that CAPS All-Star players have made each week. The All-Stars aren't necessarily putting real money behind their shorts, but they do put their CAPS score and their reputations on the line by making such bold calls. A sudden increase in bearish interest from top-rated investors could signal that the stock's one to avoid, or at least deserves further research.

Here are five stocks being bombarded by "underperform" ratings from CAPS All-Stars over the past month:

Company	Sector	Change in All-Star Bears From 8/18 to 9/15	CAPS Rating (Out of 5)	CAPS Research
General Electric (NYSE: GE)	Conglomerates	35%	****	GE
Dell (Nasdaq: DELL)	Technology	33%	**	DELL
FirstFed Financial (NYSE: FED)	Financials	32%	*	FED
Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)	Technology	29%	****	CSCO
EMCORE (Nasdaq: EMKR)	Technology	27%	**	EMKR

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