Beat This Stock!

A basketball or baseball game may have only one winner, but investing offers many roads to profits. We don't need to find the "best" stock year after year to secure our financial future -- we just need to find really good stocks, really consistently. Now, the collective intelligence of our 78,000-plus Motley Fool CAPS investors makes that task easier than ever.

For every high-rated stock on CAPS -- like five-star-rated data networking equipment maker Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), which is set to wire India with the latest in IP network technology -- there's an even better stock above it in the rankings. Just look for the "Beat This Stock!" button in the top right corner of each stock's CAPS page. Click that button long enough, and you'll climb the CAPS ladder toward the service's No. 1-ranked stock. Along the way, you'll gain a handful of stock ideas that might help you beat the market by an even wider margin than your favorite firm.

So who ranks better than Cisco? Below are five stocks that ranked higher than the oil services giant in CAPS investors' opinion, as of this morning. CAPS is a dynamic service, so the list may be different for you:

Company	1-Year Return	LT Growth Forecast	CAPS Rating (out of 5)
Cisco	4.38%	14.36%	*****
National Grid (NYSE: NGG)	17.67%	9.10%	*****
Natco Group (NYSE: NTG)	68.00%	20.00%	*****
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-B)	24.90%	N/A	*****
VCA Antech (Nasdaq: WOOF)	39.94%	16.50%	*****
Sterling Construction (Nasdaq: STRL)	(0.64%)	15.00%	*****

Sources: Yahoo! Finance; Motley Fool CAPS.

This is obviously not a list of stocks to buy; instead, it should be a springboard for your own due diligence. Still, let's examine some of the reasons why CAPS investors think these companies' returns will beat Cisco and the market alike.

A weekend in the Berkshires
It's not exactly trains, planes and automobiles, but the holdings of Warren Buffett are an eclectic bunch, and they just got more varied with the latest acquisition the world's greatest investor has made. It was just announced that Berkshire Hathaway plans to buy a 60% stake in an association of 125 companies running the gamut from wire and cable to transportation services to industrial products. Berkshire plans to purchase the remaining 40% of the privately held Marmon Holdings over a period of five or six years.

In addition to those assets, Buffett will be getting a piece of Union Tank Car, a railway equipment leasing company which seems to be in line with his interest in railroads.

More than 2,100 investors have rated Berkshire Hathaway over at CAPS, and all but 18 of them think it will continue to outperform the market. Some of the reasons are as simple as that expressed by top-rated All-Star hondo928, who essentially says that if it has to do with Buffett, it will win:

3 Things are certain in this world Death, Taxes, and Berkshire Hathaway will outperform.

Others, like rvh95rvh95, see the investment as not only a play on Buffett, but against the vast majority of money managers who lose to the market year-in and year-out:

This is a very conservative, very long term play. I buy this for 2 reasons. First, I trust Buffett more than I trust all of my mutual fund managers combined. Second, I've always wanted to own a share. I don't expect a huge return, but I'm pretty confident it will continue to top the SP500 even after Warren is gone.

It's the loss of Warren Buffett sometime in the future that has most of the bears thinking that, over the long term, Berkshire Hathaway can't outperform the market forever. All-Star FloodFinancial, with a 98.97 player rating, sees a marginal "duel" with the index, at best:

Berkshire has the potential to plummet during the transition of managers. Even if this doesn't happen, whats the upside? a 2-3 point outdual [sic] of the S&P, you can't even lock-in that as accuracy points in CAPS. The current score leaders are going short, I'm going w/ them.

Just beat it!
Is CAPS correct? These companies may rate higher than Cisco, but will they actually top its performance going forward? Head to Motley Fool CAPS and share your opinion on your favorite stock to beat.

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