Stock Smackdown: Cramer vs. CAPS

• Email
• Share
• Print

There's no denying that Mad Money host Jim Cramer is entertaining, popular, and passionate. On many occasions, he's even right. So he's smart, funny, and the closest thing to a stock market rock star -- but is he smarter than you?

Cramming for Cramer
The Fool's free investing community, Motley Fool CAPS, aggregates the opinion of more than 130,000 members to assign ratings for each stock's likelihood of outperforming or underperforming the market.

Below, we look at some top stocks that Cramer picked and panned during last week's "lightning rounds," and compare them to how the CAPS community sees their future.

Stock	Lightning Round Show Date	Cramer's Rating	CAPS Rating (out of 5)
Dendreon (Nasdaq: DNDN)	Monday	Bearish	**
Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO)	Monday	Bullish	****
Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO)	Tuesday	Bullish	**
Boeing (NYSE: BA)	Tuesday	Bearish	***
Quanta Services	Wednesday	Bullish	****
J. Crew	Wednesday	Bearish	**
First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR)	Wednesday	Bearish	**
UltraShort Financial ProShares (NYSE: SKF)	Thursday	Bearish	**
Allos Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ALTH)	Thursday	Bullish	***
International Bancshares	Thursday	Bullish	**

Cramer says
Initially, one of the best things to say about Yahoo!'s new CEO Carol Bartz was that she wasn't Jerry Yang. But an executive needs to be more than just "not the previous guy." Last week, Jim Cramer said he was willing to give the former Squawk Box host a chance to get Yahoo!'s act together:

We are going to give Carol Bartz a chance...... Carol Bartz is a money maker, she is the CEO...... I think she pulls the company together...... I am betting with Carol Bartz on Yahoo...... and I am saying, buy, buy, buy....... which is quite contrary to what everyone else is thinking...... Carol Bartz is always welcome on this show...... used to host Squawk Box, she is really fabulous.

With rumors swirling now that talks between Yahoo! and Microsoft may be on again, the companies might also massage this story to get a happy ending after all.

CAPS says
All of those reasons seemed to drive top-rated CAPS All-Star Matt8265's decision to go big with a bet on Yahoo!:

Bartz is no Yang. Better than a 50% chance of buy out. Releasing new products. Online shopping thrives as Malls die out... and they are, big time. About 40% of it's price from last year alone and much better shape... Oh yeah, they have 3.3 Billion bucks in the bank net with zero debt. Coming out of this 1/2 depression companies with cash will be picking up the distressed at 80% off.

Everything still seems to be on the table. It's believed Bartz and Ballmer are looking at a wide range of possibilities for combining or pooling some of the Internet assets of the two companies. For example, Microsoft's previous plan to pay Yahoo! for any advertising revenue it would realize after taking over its search business could be resurrected. Or perhaps a swap of search for the display-ad business might be on the table.

Regardless of the way it goes, letting Bartz be Bartz seems to be the way to go.

Your say
While CAPS members may stand with Jim Cramer or on opposite sides of the field, the investor intelligence community is more than what some All-Stars think, even if they are TV personalities. But what do you think? Is Cramer right or off his rocker? Why not head off right now to CAPS and sound off with your thoughts on whether a Yahoo!-Microsoft combination is just a way to break some hearts again.

Motley Fool CAPS is a great place to start your own research on these stocks. 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. Best of all it's free!