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. Newly appointed executives are often expected to effect substantial change, if not realize greater shareholder value, in their first 100 days.

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 earning 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 first year we have data, so might we assume that when the best players rate the best stocks, there is a correlation there, too?

One of our highest-rated CAPS investors is MakeItSeven, with a near-perfect 99.97 player rating. A player since June 2007, MakeItSeven now has 176 active picks on CAPS out of more than 800 stock picks made. With better than 76% accuracy, MakeItSeven has also attracted 64 "groupies" -- CAPS players who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites.

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

Searching for an answer
You can almost sense it: Investing in China was so last year. A number of sectors that were hot have cooled off; Chinese stocks are the third-worst performers so far this year, according to Credit Suisse; inflation is worrying; and the Shanghai Index has fallen by about a third. So what's the new, new thing?

Well, if you simply look at all companies as a monolithic bloc, you can end up missing individual opportunities for continued growth. One such stock might be Sohu.com, the Chinese Internet portal that continues to shame analysts with its ability to grow and surpass expectations. In its latest earnings release, Sohu told the market who's who and reported rising revenue and profits that far outstripped forecasts. With the Summer Olympics approaching and a market valuation that's just about one-quarter that of Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.com (NASDAQ:BIDU), Sohu would seemingly have plenty of catalysts to drive shares higher.

Yet shares are up 42% this year alone, and even bullish investors feel that Sohu's stock is ripe for a correction before climbing once again. Top-rated CAPS All-Star investor FleaBagger believes that Sohu's success lies in the simplicity of navigating its site:

My Chinese (Taiwanese) co-worker just explained to me that Sohu.com has everything that every Chinese person wants within two or three clicks of its front page. This is idiomatic of the Chinese language, in which each word is the size of one letter of an English word. So, for example, if Sohu did CAPS, this page would be all on one screen. Therefore, a link-based interface works better in Chinese than it does (or did) in English... Sohu is going to trounce Baidu (the Chinese Google) because nobody wants to search for things they can get within two clicks anyway, and if they did, they could use Sohu to search anyway.

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have amped up their endorsements of Sohu.com, but we haven't yet heard from you. Hockey great Wayne Gretzky once said you miss 100% of the shots you never take. At Motley Fool CAPS, every investor's opinion counts, and because it's free to sign up, why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?