Stock Smackdown: Cramer vs. CAPS

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?

The Fool's free investing community, Motley Fool CAPS, aggregates the opinion of more than 120,000 members to assign ratings for each stock's likelihood of outperforming or underperforming the market. For the first 20 months since we began tracking the CAPS community's collective intelligence in late 2006, the data shows that newly minted five-star stocks offer the best opportunities for investors, while lowest-rated companies fared the worst.

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

Cramer says ...
It's not a question of whether hospitals should cut back on purchases of medical equipment. The reality is that they're doing just that. And that's going to work against Intuitive Surgical, which Cramer thinks is a better play when things are more robust. As Cramer recently said:

Nope. Wrong stock for this environment. That's a bull-market stock. It's a concept stock that they're going to sell machines to the sky. You can't do that anymore. It's like First Solar. No. It's just ... I mean, it's not as bad as Garmin. It's not a commodity. But I can't recommend that high-multiple stock. It doesn't work. It does not sell at or near cash, it doesn't have an accidentally high yield, and it is not recession resistant ... because there are many countries in this world that are going to cut back on expensive medical equipment, even though they shouldn't.

CAPS says
Although the market has indeed lopped off value from Intuitive Surgical's stock with a meat cleaver rather than a scalpel, the CAPS community remains solidly behind the maker of the daVinci robot, and 95% rate the company as an outperform. CAPS member maven12 thinks Intuitive Surgical will break the code for a rebound as its innovation and patents protect it from incursion.

Intuitive is down more than 50% from its summer 2008 highs, but that's an opportunity. It is a monopoly in a rapidly developing field. Barriers to entry are high (patents, product development, and sales) and that places [Intuitive] is a good place.

It is running about 30x forward earnings with a recent growth rate of about 60% and projections which are similar. When investors learn that [Intuitive] isn't like all the others ... they're likely to get a nice kick.

Another area of divergence between CAPS and Cramer is on Guitar Hero maker Activision Blizzard. Where the Mad Money star sees it falling as consumers continue to rein in spending for Christmas, CAPS member msududek sees Cramer being only partially correct: "[In] talking with a lot of 20 something jokers and penguins, I am told that the products that [A]ctivision is peddling are selling like crack ... so from a product standpoint if I am hearing this from a number of kids that lead different lives in different states ... well that is a good sign and worth dropping coin on ... my belief is that people will cut back spending on crappy 2nd tier toys, games, etc ... and continue spending on first tie r... nothing is cheaper on a per hour basis than playing video games."

Your say
CAPS members might stand with Jim Cramer or on opposite sides of the field, but the investor-intelligence community is more than what the All-Stars think, even if some of them are TV personalities. But what do you think? Is Cramer right, or is he off his rocker? Why not head off right now to CAPS and sound off with your thoughts on Intuitive Surgical?

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!