We know that insider buying, stock buybacks, and raising guidance are considered bullish signs. But what about the opposite?

Insider selling isn't always a sign of rough waters ahead -- the insider might need the money for Junior's education, or for reasons that have nothing to do with the business. And while stock dilution can be a bad thing, splitting a stock to make more shares available can be good.

Don't look down
What about lowering guidance? It could be a warning of poor performance for the foreseeable future, or it could be a small speed bump on the road to further profits. When a company forecasts lower profits or revenue, its stock usually takes a hit. Maybe it's time to get out, too -- or maybe it's time to buy more!

To help tell the difference, we're going to turn to the Motley Fool CAPS community to learn which of these stocks Foolish investors think have the power to turn lemons into lemonade.

(Numbers in billions)

Company

Forecast Period

New Guidance

Old Guidance

Analyst Forecast

CAPS Rating (out of five)

Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)

FY 2007

$1.21-$1.26*

$1.25-$1.30*

$1.29*

**

Fair Isaac (NYSE:FIC)

FY 2007

$1.55-$1.65

$2.15

$2.53

**

Gibraltar Industries (NASDAQ:ROCK)

Q1 2007

$0.20-$0.22

$0.23-$0.27

$0.26

*****
Sources: Company SEC filings; Yahoo! Finance. CAPS Ratings courtesy of Motley Fool CAPS.
*Denotes revenue estimate.

Similar to last week, the CAPS community is pretty sour about most of the stocks here. The system currently asks more than 27,000 professional and novice investors alike to rank the thousands of stocks in our CAPS universe, overweighting the opinions of the most successful and accurate among them. From that data, CAPS rates each company from one to five stars, with five stars being the best.

Star of the lemonade stand?
While building products manufacturer Gibraltar Industries looks to have the taste to make the market pucker up, online movie-rental company Netflix looks like a real sourpuss here. New subscribers grew at a rate 30% below that of last quarter, possibly due to the heavy-marketing steel-cage death match employed by rival Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI). Considering that Netflix also lost existing customers at a higher rate, it could be that Blockbuster's "Total Access" plan (which allows customers to return an online rental at any bricks-and-mortar store) is paying off -- certainly more than I was willing to give it credit for when I figured it was "game over" for Blockbuster.

Over at CAPS, investors have raised these concerns about the online movie rental service:

  • CAPS player Arribous points out what may be Blockbuster's advantage. As a former Netflix customer, he says, "I have used the service in the past and have been pleased with it, but there have been times when I wished I could drive to an actual building and exchange it for a new DVD right away."
  • Matt2007 believes that "soon, like [with] music, we'll be downloading movies onto our personal computers where we can link up to our TV, making DVD players largely obsolete."
  • StarBellyDave recognizes Netflix's online rental dominance, "but once the market turns to video on demand, NFLX will be just one of many, with Blockbuster, Yahoo!, Apple/iPod, and many others trying to squeeze NFLX out."

So are the bears right? Will Netflix win the battle, but lose the war to Blockbuster or video on demand? Want to tell us what your opinion is on these companies? Then click here to join the Fool's groundbreaking achievement in collective investor intelligence. It's completely free to join.

Yahoo! and Netflix are recommendations of Motley Fool Stock Advisor. To find out why, and to see all past picks and how they've performed, take a 30-day free trial of our flagship newsletter.

Though Fool contributor Rich Duprey has an account with Netflix and recently started renting from a local Blockbuster store again, he does not own any of the stocks mentioned in this article. You can see his holdings here. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.