The Century Mark

Presidents are often 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 bring change to the online portal.

Around here 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 earning 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 there as well?

We're going to highlight a few of the recent stock picks made by these CAPS investors who've reached the 100-in-100 milestone, and then zero in on those stocks that the rest of the CAPS community thinks have the greatest potential. It's like the investor intelligence that the CAPS team is putting to work in the new Fool Intel surveys.

This week, we're going to look at one of our highest-rated CAPS players, chk999, who sports a 99.99 player rating. A player since June 2006, chk999 has 189 active picks on CAPS but has made a total of nearly 1,000 stock picks, with an accuracy of 77.53%. Here are a few of his most recent selections and how they were rated.

Stocks are off to a rocky start this year, but so far, chk999's score is holding up on most of these picks. Let's take a closer look at banking and financial services company Wells Fargo, which chk999 has rated as an outperform.

All's well
Avoiding the debacle of the subprime mortgage industry and other housing-related hassles has not been easy for mortgage lenders and others in the finance community. Yet Wells Fargo has managed to avoid big problems here, indicating a depth of conservative management that even Warren Buffett would love. As a matter of fact, Warren does have a warm spot for this institution -- he recently added another slug of its stock to his Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, so that it now occupies the second-largest position there. Only Coca-Cola is higher.

More than 1,500 CAPS investors have rated Wells Fargo, and not quite 10% have selected it to underperform the market. More common have been the bulls, like CAPS All-Star rajeevg, who last November noted the risks Wells Fargo still faces but found it more than capable of grabbing market share from competitors:

Wells is being taken to the woodshed along with the rest of the financial industry, although they have been much more conservative in their practices than most. Credit losses will surely increase for Wells over the next couple of years, but the company is in excellent shape to weather the storm. As competitors struggle, Wells should be able to increase market share and make cheap acquisitions.

Along with less exposure to the subprime mortgage mess, other CAPS players such as PenguinOnFire simply like the fact that Buffett has been buying, while chk999 himself feels like he is buying a good stock at sale prices.

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have made Wells Fargo a top pick, but we haven't yet 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 because it's free to sign up, why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?