You Are CAPS' Only Hope

Newsflash: At The Motley Fool, we're not huge fans of Wall Street.

Maybe we're cynics. Perhaps we find pigs in drag distasteful. Or maybe we just know that the vast majority of Wall Street Wizards need a two-headed coin to call a stock right.

Whatever the reason, we Foolishly believe that Joe and Jane Investor can pick stocks just as well as Nigel and Vivian, CFA. That's why we created Motley Fool CAPS: to harness the small-w wisdom of the capital-F Foolish crowd to pick the winners of tomorrow. Problem is, not everyone is pulling their weight.

For the most part, the 83,000 investors currently on CAPS are telling us what we already know: ConocoPhillips and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) -- good. General Motors (NYSE: GM) and Countrywide Financial -- bad. Those four picks have nearly 10,000 ratings among them.

Thanks for playing. No, really!
Not that we don't appreciate the effort. We do. Today, I'm asking you to broaden your horizons. We still have literally hundreds of stocks out there in CAPS-land that lack the 10 ratings necessary to earn them a CAPS "star" rating.

Where you come in
I'd like to introduce you to three from these hundreds. If you know the companies in question, please take a moment to tell us whether you like them or hate them, and why. It's really as simple as that.

Pennsylvania Commerce Bancorp (Nasdaq: COBH)
Harrisburg, Pa.-based Pennsylvania Commerce Bancorp has spent the past 24 years building up a business serving the needs of local consumers and small and midsized companies. Eschewing the flashy side of banking, PCB focuses on the basics: checking and savings accounts for Joe and Jane homeowner, commercial construction and real estate loans for the small business community, and almost every other service you'd expect from a small-town bank with less than $150 million in annual revenue. Eight Fools have rated it, and most of them seem to like what they see -- but no one has yet penned a pitch in favor of PCB. Here's your chance to be the first.

Standex International (NYSE: SXI)
Standex International proves you don't have to be big to call yourself a "diversified manufacturing company." With less than a billion bucks in annual revenues to its name, little Standex builds everything from convenience store freezers to hydraulic cylinders for dump trucks, and food cabinets to air ducts. Boring business? Perhaps, but the company is profitable -- and its superb free cash flow is downright exciting. No one follows Standex on Wall Street, so it could be that no one has yet noticed that this company sells for a mere six and one-third times its trailing free cash flow. Come on over to CAPS and spill the beans.

SunCom Wireless Holdings (NYSE: TPC)
Just as you don't have to be the size of General Electric (NYSE: GE) to produce a diversified line of products, AT&T (NYSE: T) isn't the only game in town when it comes to telecom. Less than one-hundredth the size of AT&T by revenues, tiny SunCom Wireless provides long-distance, roaming, network monitoring, and information technology services to the good people of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and even here on the mainland. Nine Fools have rated SunCom. Again, most of them like it -- but again, no one is saying why. Here's yet another chance for you to be the first.

Help us, Obi-Wan! Trounce or trip?
Each stock above currently falls one or two votes short of earning its CAPS stars. That gives you the chance to play the hero today. You can provide the deciding vote that puts any of them over the top, and lets everyone else on CAPS know whether it's ready to trounce the market or trip over its own feet.

Once again, our candidates are:

• Pennsylvania Commerce Bancorp
• Standex International
• SunCom Wireless Holdings.

Give 'em some love, people.