A New Foolish Freebie

If you've spent any time on the Fool, chances are you've heard about our market-beating newsletter services once or twice. Why, you may even have received a delightful, delectable message in your email box, offering you the chance to try one out for free. But did you know that there's an "unofficial" Fool newsletter that just started up, written by none other than not-quite-employee but still all-around good Fool TMFEldrehad?

And did you know that according to Motley Fool CAPS, TMFEldrehad is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- the absolute, undisputed, No. 1 investor in the entire universe, with a perfect 100.00 CAPS rating? Better than both Fool co-Founders David Gardner (95.99) and Tom Gardner (94.65)?

Well there is (a newsletter), and it is (free), and last but not least, he is (No. 1 in CAPS). So let me be the first to introduce you to the latest way to pick stocks Foolishly, and free: EldrehadsPicks.

How it works
As you can tell when you click that link above, EldrehadsPicks is not a newsletter in the ordinary sense of the word. You don't pay for it, for one thing. It doesn't arrive in your inbox, for another. And it kills no trees, nor does it subsidize the USPS before arriving in your snail-mail box, for a third. Rather, what TMFEldrehad (known in his home state of sunny California as Russell Carpenter) has done is created a CAPS "profile" separate from the identity under which he won, and retains, the coveted title of "Top Fool." Here, Eldrehad will be picking one new stock each and every month, laying out his investment thesis in blog form, and then letting CAPS track his performance so you can see how well he's doing.

That's right, Fools. We've made investing into a spectator sport, and the tix are free!

Early bird
Eldrehad fired up the newsletter with its inaugural pick one week ago today. And what company flew out of the nest? Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ:RRGB) -- which promptly fell 4% upon recommendation. Talk about your trial by fire!

Without going into too many specifics about why Eldrehad likes it (you can just as easily read the details here), I'd summarize his investment thesis thusly:

• Recent sales growth of 29%.
• Cash flow growth that's lagging sales growth by a bit.
• Net earnings growth that's lagging sales growth by a lot.

Wait! Come back!
OK, admittedly, there's little bullish news in the above, but here's the kicker: Eldrehad thinks Red Robin can turn things around, and he notes that while we wait for that to happen, we've got here a chance to buy a firm that's growing as rapidly as such rocket stocks as Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendations Chipotle (NYSE:CMG-B) and Buffalo Wild Wings (NASDAQ:BWLD) -- but that sells for less than a third the multiple to sales of the former, and about a 27% discount to the price-to-earnings ratio of the latter.

Well, OK, but ...
"But how do you know you should trust this guy?" That's a fair question. Well, looking over his record of active picks on restaurant stocks, we find:

Hmm. A couple of winners -- and one big loser. But what about historically? Digging through his CAPS graveyard of now-closed picks, we find:

Now, I imagine there are many ways to interpret the tables above. They're a numerical Rorschach test, and your interpretations may vary. But I read them as proving that Eldrehad gets his picks right about twice as often as wrong.

Still, I think it was Peter Lynch who said the very best investors were the ones who managed to consistently get 60% to 70% of their picks right. Eldrehad is batting 78%, which explains why he's top Fool. And which explains why when he speaks, you just might want to listen. After all, the call is toll-free.

One last time, that number is 1-800 E-L-D-R-E-H-A-D-S-P-I-C-K-S. Pick up the mouse and click now.

Chipotle's "A" shares are a Rule Breakers recommendation. Starbucks is a Stock Advisor selection.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. You can find him on CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handle TMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 184 out of more than 60,000 players. He does not even dream of trying to catch up with Eldrehad. The Fool has a disclosure policy.