A 1-in-100 Investor

The first 100 days in office sets the tone for any new president. Similarly, Motley Fool CAPS keeps an eye on how well investors do in their first 100 days. Some of our best members -- we call them All-Stars -- have achieved scores of 100 on stock selections in their first 100 days on CAPS. In this column, we're looking at top members who made some of their best selections early on and seeing which ones they think will be best next.

One of our highest-rated CAPS members is FlaxSeedOil, who sports a 99.92 member rating. A member since October 2006, FlaxSeedOil has 200 active picks on CAPS out of almost 1,400 stock picks made. With 80% accuracy, FlaxSeedOil has attracted 44 "groupies," CAPS members who've listed this 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 by which a member is beating (lagging) the S&P 500 index from the time of the call.

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

Degree of risk
Some industry bellwethers indicate there might be a recovery underway in the chip sector, and Seagate Technology would like you to believe that those winds of change are blowing in the disk-drive business, too. It posted a fourth-quarter loss of $81 million because the burden of restructuring charges drove performance down, but the full-year numbers were even worse because losses mounted to more than $3 billion. Management, though, expects things to get better and raised guidance above analyst expectations. Seagate Technology says revenues next quarter should reach as much as $2.6 billion -- better than consensus estimates of $2.4 billion.

CAPS member TyrVsGarm thinks it's too early in earnings season to make any judgments:

Seagate has more than tripled from the March lows. During this earning season, I expect many firms to announce new rounds of cost-cutting and capital expenditure deferrals. I'd stay clear of Seagate until the end of earnings season at the very least.

STEC is certainly operating as if it's in the midst of boom times, let alone a "green shoots" recovery. Its solid-state disk drives, though more expensive than hard disk drives, are more durable and probably will become more prevalent as their price falls. And STEC just snagged a deal to sell $120 million worth of its flash drives and now says its ZeusIOPS line will contribute as much as $220 million in revenues this year.

CAPS member alwaystheskeptic says STEC has an advantage because it operates at the enterprise level and dominates its field:

There is NO other company that makes a product that can compete with their premiere ENTERPRISE SSD, ZEUS IOPS. [Intel] and Hitachi are attempting to come up with a competitive product which is targeted for release in early 2010. But, STEC has already racked up every major enterprise storage [company] as a customer with the exception of NTAP. That I predict will have to switch to be competitive. Enterprise products unlike retail/consumer products enjoy a much higher margin (50-60%) and much less competition. Why don't other companies produce enterprise SSD's? It is a much more complex and expense technology to develop and implement into a [customer's] system. MONOPOLY is the word until somebody can come up with a comparable product. They've been try'n, but haven't been able to yet.

There's no monopoly on movie theaters, though, even if IMAX is unique. But high ticket costs are one reason why the widescreen movie company's stock is overpriced, CAPS member emptygestures writes:

People aren't going to movies as much anymore...mainly because the quality of film has gone to garbage and the price of a ticket does not help... I don't see any big summer blockbusters coming up and this is an experience that people will go to once maybe twice... The value of this stock is way too high

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest members in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have made their mark, but 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. It's free to sign up, so why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?