Do You Know What These Investors Know?

With 125,000 members contributing their investing thoughts to The Motley Fool's CAPS community, is there some info there that you haven't seen? As Pete Townshend would say, “You better you bet.”

There's no doubt that CAPS is a great way to quickly get the community's take on a specific stock -- for instance, check out Altria Group's (NYSE:MO) five-star rating. The service also offers a screener tool that lets you quickly find stocks based on various metrics, including their CAPS rating.

But if you're looking for some meatier discussions on stocks, the economy, and just about everything else under the sun, CAPS blogs are the place to turn. I've sorted through the blog posts that have hit the CAPS wires and picked out a few that aren't to be missed. Mind you, there's plenty of other good content that I haven't included, but this will give you a good start.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS.

Though I think you should click through and check out all of these great posts, let's go ahead and dive into a few of them here.

Dividends, dividends, dividends
It's been a year of reckoning for dividend payers. As economic malaise continues to set in, we're seeing even seasoned dividend payers cut back, if not completely eliminate, their dividends. In Dividends4Life's blog, dividend payers are broken up into three groups.

The "good" group is the companies like J&J and McDonald’s that have raised their dividend payout despite the tough times. The "bad" group is the companies that have hit tough times and haven't been able to boost their dividend payout. Think GE (NYSE:GE) as an example of this latter group -- the conglomerate reported an uninspiring fourth quarter, and though management has pledged to keep the dividend, it seems like dividend increases are off the table for the near future. And finally, there’s the ugly group. Most market watchers can probably see where this is going: Dividend cuts have come from all over, with former dividend dandy Bank of America cutting its payout all the way to $0.01.

Dividends4Life takes a view that the folks over at Motley Fool Income Investor would likely applaud -- any company that's not raising its dividend gets "put on the shelf" until things start to look better, while those that are cutting dividends get the boot.

Of course, as I'm sure Dividends4Life might also tell you, in many cases it may not be necessary to wait for the actual dividend cut to start getting wary. As I study dividend payers, I try to look for companies with stable businesses that produce a healthy amount of free cash -- that is, cash over and above what they need to keep the business going and growing. Companies that meet both of those criteria are more likely to be able to continue kicking out cash to investors even when the economy is hurting.

To get Dividends4Life's thoughts and see the rest of the good, bad, and ugly breakdown, go ahead and click through to the blog post.

No crystal balls here
Let's be honest here: Stock market analysts and stock pickers have the nearly impossible job of predicting the future. It's a job that can never be done with 100% precision, which guarantees that this group is going to be wrong an awful lot. But hey, that doesn't mean we can't poke some fun at them for some of the more ludicrous predictions.

Mad Money's Jim Cramer provides an endless supply here -- not because the guy is a complete dingbat (in fact, I think he's pretty sharp), but rather because he tries to go out every day and make directional calls on reams of stocks. Statistics alone says that he'll have a nice big pile of bad calls. In the blog post "15 Terrible Financial Predictions," ktrotter79 hits Cramer for a call on Sun Microsystems in September of 2000 in which he said that the company "has the best near-term outlook of any company I know." As ktrotter79 points out, Sun rewarded Cramer's confidence by falling 50% in the next four months and losing 95% of its value over the next two years.

Of course, Cramer isn't alone on ktrotter79's list. Goldman Sachs' (NYSE:GS) Abby Joseph Cohen makes an appearance, as does Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Larry Kudlow -- twice. Most of the silly calls are overly optimistic predictions from the Internet bubble and its demise -- anybody remember Dow 36,000? The topic, though, brings ktrotter79 around to the thought-provoking question of which of today’s ludicrous calls we’ll be laughing at five years from now. Are investors and commentators still being too optimistic? Or are the calls for horrible doom and gloom going to look silly in retrospect?

Click through here to read ktrotter79's full list of crazy predictions.

Leave with a laugh
Most CAPS blog posts stick to the topic of investing, but there's no harm in straying every once in a while -- especially if it's to offer up a laugh. This recent post from TMFDeej gives us a chance to laugh at some of the wreckage in the banking and homebuilding industries.

Haven't gotten your fill of blogs yet? Click through here to head right into the heart of CAPS' blog central.

Further CAPS Foolishness:

• Worst Stocks for 2009
• 7 Highly Rated Stocks on Sale
• 5 All-Star Stocks Fighting the Tide