A 1-in-100 Investor

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. Newly appointed executives are often expected to bring about substantial change, if not realize greater shareholder value, within the first 100 days.

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 first year we kept score, so might we assume that when the best players rate the best stocks, there is a correlation as well?

One of our highest-rated CAPS investors is OOji, with a near-perfect 99.97 rating. A player since January 2007, OOji now has 196 active picks on CAPS out of more than 890 stock picks made. As shown by the picks below, OOji has fairly earned the "skeptics" tag. Achieving more than 75% accuracy, OOji has also attracted 106 "groupies," CAPS players who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites.

Here are a few of OOji's most recent selections and how they were rated.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS. Current score is how many points by which a player is beating (lagging) the S&P 500 index from the time of the call.
^Price when call was made.

Mortgaging the future
Sometimes there's good reason to be skeptical about a company's prospects, and OOji might have a pretty good case with Alt-A subprime mortgage lender FirstFed Financial. (Alt-A loans are those made with little or no verification of income.) Undoubtedly, shareholders might feel that FirstFed-Up might be a more appropriate moniker for the bank, which operates wholly in the moribund-housing state of California. In its most recent quarterly report, FirstFed's future seemed to be as mortgaged as those of its borrowers. Delinquencies and foreclosures more than doubled -- fully three-quarters of the mortgages the firm gave out in last year's first quarter required no verification of income.

OOji is not the only one thinking FirstFed is fit for shark bait. Investors like CAPS player anchak say he can't help but be greedy when he looks at the mortgage lender's finances.

They provide a lot of details on their portfolio credit quality and [loan-to-value] exposure - the interesting thing which they claim is >90 [Original] LTV is really low. I do not think they are lying - however, you would see that 30% of their book was done at 75-80 LTV and looks like they did not do much 2nd liens... Additionally they have Condo exposure - $2 BN in Multifamily... their NPAs [non-performing assets] jumped from about 2.5-3% to 6-7% in 1Qtr from Dec to Mar... With a $16 share price - can you blame me if I get greedy?

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest players in the CAPS investor intelligence community have loaned their opinions on FirstFed, 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. It's free to sign up, so why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?