Great Call on Microsoft! What's Next?

Bing and the Zune may be fun little side stories for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) investors, but its core personal and business computing software are the real rainmakers for Mr. Softy. So, with Windows 7 now on shelves and Office 2010 on the horizon, it may be a good time to have Microsoft's stock on your radar.

Members of the Motley Fool CAPS community have certainly had their eyes on this software giant. More than 13,000 CAPS members have weighed in on Microsoft's stock, with nearly 11,500 rating it an outperformer. And it's been quite a ride for those Microsoft fans since the market bottomed out earlier this year; the stock has nearly doubled between early March and today.

But it's managed only a three-star CAPS rating (out of a possible five). But mediocre rating or not, there have been plenty of CAPS members scoring big points on Microsoft's stock. zk116, for example, has jumped into the Microsoft fray on five separate occasions -- two underperform ratings and three outperforms -- and scored more than 65 points for those timely calls.

zk116 is one of CAPS' All-Stars -- players with a rating of 80 or greater -- and has managed an impressive stock-picking accuracy of 75% while racking up more than 2,000 points. Microsoft isn't this player's only great call. Here's a look at a few of the other prescient picks:

Data from CAPS.

So what has this investor been looking at more recently? Here are a few of the most recent calls on CAPS:

Data from CAPS.

While not all of these picks may pan out, they could be a good place to start further research. I decided to take a closer look at Motley Fool Income Investor favorite PepsiCo.

More fizz, less fizzle fo' shizzle
It doesn't take a whole lot of digging to figure out why Pepsi is an attractive stock for the dividend crowd. The company doesn't promise blockbuster growth, but through killer brands like Pepsi, Doritos, and Gatorade, it does have a business that can deliver solid results even through tough economic times. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Pepsi has a solid balance sheet and produces gobs of cash.

With many investors -- including myself -- scratching their heads over how far this rally can run, a stock like Pepsi that we can count on to fizz rather than fizzle seems like a good pick. With a forward price-to-earnings ratio of nearly 15, we can't exactly say that Pepsi's stock is cheap, but it's a pretty fair price considering the stability and income that the stock offers.

More than 3,600 CAPS members have given Pepsi's stock a thumbs-up and it carries a perfect five-star CAPS rating. When it comes to explaining why the stock is so great, I happen to like civilwarguru's assessment: "Dude this is the beastliest stock eva!"

CAPS All-Star 00100, however, focused a bit more on the numbers when giving the stock a thumbs-up:

Upthumb. Very good cash flow. Nominal payout. 9% sales growth. 19% cap-ex. high quick ratio and low to nominal debt ratio. 56% margins. Lots of room to grow and the capital base and cash flow to do it.

But here's the important question: What's your take? Will Pepsi be able to keep its fizziness? Get in the action by clicking over to CAPS. It's absolutely free and already has more than140,000 stock pickers chipping in to find the best stocks out there.

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