A 1-in-100 Investor

Just as the first 100 days in office set the tone for any new president, Motley Fool CAPS keeps an eye on how well investors do in the same span of time. Some of our best -- we call them All-Stars -- have achieved scores of 100 on stock selections in their first 100 days on CAPS. In this column, we're looking at our best members, to see who made some of their best stock selections early on. And we want to see which stocks those members think will be the next big hits.

One of our most highly rated CAPS members is novavm, who sports a 99.89 member rating. A member since September 2006, novavm currently has 200 active picks on CAPS out of almost 1,000 stock picks made. Achieving 73% accuracy, novavm has attracted 145 "groupies," CAPS members who've listed this leading investor as one of their favorites.

Here are a few of this top member's most recent stock selections and how they were rated.

Source: Motley Fool CAPS.
*Price when call was made. Current score is how many points a member is beating (lagging) the S&P500 index from the time of the call.

With novavm dabbling in the health and energy sectors while expecting each of the companies to outperform the market, let's see whether other CAPS members agree with this leading player's assessment.

Degree of risk
Only a few weeks ago, Spectrum Pharmaceuticals was heating up in anticipation of FDA approval for expanded use of its non-Hodgkin's lymphoma treatment Zevalin. Being a "first-line consolidation treatment" means that Zevalin could be prescribed immediately after a patient responds in a positive manner to a first-line treatment such as chemotherapy.

Although it already has approval for such use in Europe, the FDA requested more data from Spectrum before it would permit the expanded treatment. The markets didn't like that, and Spectrum's shares got cut by a third. Highly rated CAPS All-Star member zzlangerhans had actually anticipated a "drop on the news" reaction last month, although zzlangerhans was expecting a straight-up approval from the regulatory agency.

Still, the complete response letter that the FDA asked for would still seem to be a formality to eventual approval. As Spectrum noted, the FDA didn't want any additional clinical trials performed -- it just wanted the data from Spectrum's FIT study to support and verify the data that's under review.

Another top CAPS member isn't so sure any of this will mean much anyway. Spectrum's other drug on the market is Fusilev, a treatment for colorectal cancer that got a nice bounce in sales as a result of a shortage of generic leucovorin. Patients ended up being prescribed Spectrum's more expensive brand, but with the shortage now abated, aracer thinks the pharmaceutical will suffer a hit to earnings: "This poorly run company got lucky that a shortage of generic leucovorin, a key chemo drug, caused a temporary sales spike due to off-formulary prescription of their more expensive substitute drug Fusilev. The resolution of the leucovorin shortage will cause a significant drop in earnings and commensurate drop in PPS."

While the 157 other companies in the CAPS Pharmaceuticals sector have risen by 6% in the past month, the S&P 500 has fallen by 7% and Spectrum Pharmaceuticals gave up all of its gains and is now 12% below where it was 30 days ago.

A 1-in-100 opportunity
Some of the best and smartest members in the CAPS investor-intelligence community have made their mark, but it pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page.

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, and since it's free to sign up, why not use this opportunity to take your best shot?