A 1-in-100 Investor

The first 100 days in office set the tone for any new president. Motley Fool CAPS keeps an eye as well 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 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 mikotian, who sports a near-perfect 99.93 member rating. A member since November 2006, mikotian currently has 164 active picks on CAPS, out of more than 1,070 stock picks made. Achieving 76% accuracy, mikotian has also attracted 14 "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 by the overall community.

Stock	CAPS Rating (5 max)	Call	Price*	Current Score
A-Power Energy Generation (Nasdaq: APWR  )	****	Underperform	$12.14	(9.99)
Constellation Energy (NYSE: CEG  )	****	Outperform	$36.42	(28.44)
Garmin (Nasdaq: GRMN  )	****	Underperform	$32.47	(16.56)
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS  )	***	Underperform	$132.09	(2.27)
James River Coal	**	Underperform	$26.08	(23.55)
Massey Energy	***	Outperform	$38.00	12.60
MercadoLibre (Nasdaq: MELI  )	****	Outperform	$24.96	(1.11)
Rentech (NYSE: RTK  )	**	Underperform	$1.75	0.99
Ultratech	*	Underperform	$12.97	(3.91)
Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO  )	****	Underperform	$32.63	(6.00)

Source: Motley Fool CAPS.
*Price when call was made.
Current score is how many points a player is beating (lagging) the S&P500 index from the time of the call.

Let's take a look at what other CAPS members are saying about these stocks and whether they agree with this player's assessment.

Goldman Sachs
If only I had $5 billion to invest, like Warren Buffett, I could get the same great terms from Goldman Sachs as the Oracle: $5 billion in perpetual preferred shares, a 10% dividend, and warrants to buy $5 billion worth of common stock at $115 a stub anytime over the next five years. As it is, Goldman is offering the rest of the unwashed masses pieces of the one-time investment banking giant as it tries to raise some $2.5 billion in its first secondary offering since 2000. With its coming conversion to a bank holding company structure, Goldman will be picking among the ruins of the financial flotsam to acquire prime deposits to bolster its assets.

Prior to the word that Buffett was betting big on Goldman, though, top-rated CAPS All-Star gomb0824 figured the changed credit landscape made the probability that it would outperform the market -- even over the short term -- a remote possibility:

[Goldman Sachs] was an outperform pick due to their previously strong strategic position in the sector. Now that the fundamentals have changed, both for [Goldman] and the industry, the status quo no longer applies. Concerns over continued credit woes, the instability and diminished confidence brought by this market, and the effect of structural changes to the firm will impact the profitablility of [Goldman] in the short-term.

Valero Energy
No doubt oil's decline has been a boon to refiners like Valero, but the uncertainty surrounding the financial markets' bailout caused prices to spike higher. In fact, they had risen $25 a barrel at one point, the biggest one-day jump ever. That's a cause for concern for refiners, because the price difference between crude oil and the petroleum products like gasoline extracted from it -- called the crack spread -- is a determining factor in their profits.

Such volatility is probably what CAPS member pables had in mind when noting the rowdy excursion that investors would be in for, though the long-term outlook remained positive.  "Expect a wild ride for this and the whole petroleum exploration and production area, but conflict and shortages will improve Valero's long-term bottom line."

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest members in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have made their mark. It pays to start your own research on these stocks on 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?