A 1-in-100 Investor

Presidents are often measured by what they achieve during their first 100 days in office. Schools have parties for students on the 100th day of the school year. When Jerry Yang returned to Yahoo! last summer, he gave himself 100 days to effect change at the online portal.

Around here at Motley Fool CAPS, we keep an eye on the 100-day mark, too. Some of our best investors -- we call them All-Stars -- have achieved top-player ratings after garnering a score of 100 in their first 100 days on CAPS. Analysis has shown that the top-rated stocks have had the best performance over the past year, so might we assume that when the best players rate the best stocks, there is a correlation as well?

One of our highest-rated CAPS investors is DownWithInfidels, who sports a 99.96 player rating. A player since March, 2007, DownWithInfidels currently has 199 active picks on CAPS out of nearly 600 stock picks made. Achieving better than 75% accuracy, DownWithInfidels has also attracted more than 160 "groupies," CAPS players who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites.

Here are a few of the most recent stock selections and how they were rated.

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

Considering that mining stocks have taken a drilling lately and financial services are teetering on the brink of investor panic, it's not surprising that DownWithInfidels' latest picks haven't had the highest fidelity performance. The Fed's recent maneuvers have eased some investor concerns, as evidenced by the 400-point surge yesterday in the Dow, but we've seen such enthusiasm quickly wane in recent weeks, and only time will tell if it's sustained.

Scarce resources at NovaGold
One company that seems to have run into a gold brick wall, and is trying to restore confidence, is NovaGold. While last week it cancelled a secondary offering it had announced only the day before, it's back to the public markets this week with a new offering on convertible senior notes. The market doesn't like what it sees and is bidding shares down more than 15% so far. Maybe it fears a liquidity crisis in the face of capital expenditure requirements at its Rock Creek and Donlin Creek projects.

If NovaGold can get its Galore Creek project going again -- a project it had to cancel recently -- CAPS investors like mpearson29 agree with DownWithInfidels that NovaGold could sway even the skeptics.

NovaGold price is down from ~$20 when Galore Creek construction was called off. If they can get that project back on track and Rock Creek into production, this price is a steal.

DownWithInfidels had his own exuberant, if not interesting, slant on the value of metals stocks these days.

Hurray for Gold!!! Hurray for Silver!!! ... Down with $US!!! ... Up with U.S. stock market nominal basis!!! Down with U.S. stock market real basis!!! Down with U.S. Houses!!! ... Down with U.S. Economy!!! and DOWN WITH INFIDELS!!!!!!!!

Whoever shorts metals company because of no revenue is stupid!!! Why trade good metals for bad $US just to report revenue!!! A company can have no revenue, just sleep, but if the price of their metals go up, market cap go up! All metals miners should stop producing ... and wait until supply goes down until Gold hits $5000 then to sell their metals!!!

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor intelligence community have deposited their opinion on NovaGold, but we haven't heard yet from you.

As hockey great Wayne Gretzky said, "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?