A 1-in-100 Investor

Presidents often have their performances 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.

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 floridabuilder, who sports a nearly perfect 99.97 player rating. A player since August 2007, floridabuilder currently has made roughly 1,100 stock picks, with 132 active ones on CAPS. Achieving better-than-78% accuracy, floridabuilder has also attracted 489 "groupies," CAPS players who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites, no doubt in part because of his popular CAPS blog.

Here are a few of floridabuilder's most recent stock selections and ratings.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS.
FXP began trading on 11/8/07.
Price = stock price when call was made. Current Score = the number of points by which a player is beating (lagging) the S&P 500 index from the time of the call.

A mutually exclusive opportunity
Despite something of a bearish sentiment, one company floridabuilder has found worthy of an outperform nod is Terra Industries, a manufacturer of nitrogen products for both agricultural and industrial businesses. The company's leading position in the industry drew another All-Star CAPS investor, alanbluespan, to bestow a bullish thumbs-up on it. "Terra Industries is another huge beneficiary of the agricultural boom due to its leading role in the production of liquid nitrogen fertilizer for row crops," alanbluespan writes.

Agricultural businesses rely on nitrogen-containing products to grow their crops. It should be little surprise, then, that investors are excited about the boost that some crops -- especially corn -- have given to ethanol production. That's a big reason captnhowdydodat thinks Terra Industries will continue to perform well: "The politics of ethanol and the reality of forecast food shortages in '08 will continue to drive up the fertilizer market. Terra looks like a better fundamental value than [many of its] competitors … although the whole sector should do well this year."

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have sown their opinion on Terra Industries, but have we heard from you? 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, and since it's free to sign up, why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?