The Motley Fool's CAPS investing service is one of the newest additions to the investing community at Fool.com, and it's another great way for investors to work together to beat the market. One of the features in CAPS allows users to set up a blog to talk about their picks, investing strategy, market view, or their favorite football team (if they so desire).
I've scoured the CAPS blog universe to bring you a generous helping of the top blog posts of the past week.
The bright side of pessimism
Most Foolish investors know the magic of picking a great stock that outperforms the market. They'll take a NYSE Euronext (NYSE:NYX) -- up 251% since being picked by Rule Breakers -- or a Quality Systems -- up 540% since Stock Advisor first recommended it -- all day long.
But what is the value of avoiding a bad stock and missing out on the underperformance of a Ford or a Westwood One? This week, CAPS' top Fool, TMFKmoney, tackles that question and talks about how that big red thumbs down on CAPS can be very useful in your real-world investing.
The Duke
In CAPS video land, the Duke of Wall Street has been back at it, spicing up some CAPS player pitches. This week he tackles pitches for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B), GameStop (NYSE:GME), and AuthenTec (NASDAQ:AUTH).
And for some more CAPS video action, check out the newest video pitch for Makita from David "Pencils2" Kretzmann.
Homebuilder 201
CAPS player floridabuilder has been on a writing rampage, giving his take on what's going on in the housing and credit markets and highlighting areas that he thinks fellow Fools should avoid. This week he continues the series with a "sophomore level class" where he covers how he analyzes the homebuilder stocks. He also provides "hold," "sell," and "bankruptcy" ratings on a number of homebuilder stocks including Toll Brothers (NYSE:TOL), a hold, and Beazer Homes (NYSE:BZH), a bankruptcy candidate. Notice that "buy" is not one of his options.
While this week's installment from floridabuilder's blog is a good read, Fools should be sure to check out the rest of this series as well.
Getting ideas
While CAPS itself can be a great source of stock ideas, reading through the CAPS blogs can be a great way to learn about how some CAPS players, and top players at that, get their ideas.
Speaking of top players, CAPS All-Star SarahGen blogs this week about how she gets the ideas that fill up her CAPS portfolio and also how she then goes back through her CAPS pick list to reevaluate stocks that are more interesting than the rest.
Anti-newsletter or just in need of more time?
While CAPS player EScroogeJr has managed an impressive 64% accuracy in his CAPS picks, he has taken some major lumps. Among them a 116-point loss from picking Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) to underperform, a 73 point loss from being bullish on Beazer Homes, and a massive 329 point loss from giving the thumbs down to DryShips.
In his blog post this week, EScroogeJr sucks it up and addresses his CAPS score, which -- thanks to the picks above, as well as some other doozies -- has dipped under negative 1,500. He admits that some of his picks, such as Amazon, were just plain wrong, but at the same time he stresses his focus on the long term and thinks some of his current underperforming picks will yet shine.
Housing and lending shorts
Might there be a reason to get bullish on housing and lending stocks? CAPS All-Star TDRH thinks so. Check out his blog post for his take on why we could see homebuilders doing a bit of bouncing.
The only real inflation solution for China
This week, CAPS player turleymuller has tackled the issue of inflation in China and how letting its currency float could help ease the situation. He also touches on the issue of food inflation in China and offers up that the country might be much better off it reallocated resources and imported a lot more of its food.
So now it's your turn -- get off the sidelines, join CAPS, and start up your own CAPS blog to share your own knowledge and insights with the rest of the CAPS universe.
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