A 1-in-100 Investor

Just as the first 100 days in office sets the tone for any new president, Motley Fool CAPS keeps an eye on how well investors do in their first 100 days. 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 who made some of their best stock selections early on, and we're seeing which ones they think will be best next.

One of our highest-rated CAPS members is StatsGeek, who sports a 99.99 member rating. A member since December 2006, StatsGeek currently has 173 active picks on CAPS out of more than 1,650 stock picks made. Achieving 83% accuracy, StatsGeek has attracted more than 1,860 "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.

Let's look at what other CAPS members are saying about a few of these stocks and whether they agree with this leading player's assessment.

Degree of risk
Having your name closely associated with a financial institution that's on the verge of going bankrupt can create doubts about your own viability. So while retail business lender CIT Group was pleading for more handouts from the government -- it got $2.3 billion last December -- department-store operator Dillard's was passing out press releases noting that CIT is no longer a party to its revolver and has no ongoing relationship with the troubled financial company.

Really, Dillard's has had its own issues to contend with without the financial troubles of one of its former lenders making things seem even worse. June's same-store sales, for example, plummeted by 14%, worse than the 10% analysts had been expecting. Worse still, comps are down 13% year to date, while total sales are off 15%. Although its stock is off about 10% for the month, it's more than doubled so far this year. Dillard's actually isn't alone. Quite a few low-quality stocks have had enormous runs lately.

It's that kind of contrary performance that's left some investors scratching their heads. CAPS member sumbawa figures that with Dillard's so closely tied to consumer spending, which hasn't shown many signs of making any headway, the company will underperform the market going forward: "Stock has tripled but I can't really see why. Heavy losses, exposure to the consumer and the home-furnishing consumer at that."

Maybe the market is starting to catch up here, however. The S&P 500 has inched up 2% in the past month, while the CAPS Consumer Discretionary sector has risen more than 7% over the past 30 days.

Run away!
Distancing itself from bad news might also have been the reason behind the name change of CenterState Banks, which dropped the words "of Florida" from its name. With the housing market decimated there, perhaps it's not a good thing to be associated with the state, particularly when you're slashing your dividend by 75%. Maybe we'll see companies dropping the word "California" from their names next.

It's little wonder that whatever it decides to call itself, investors are leery of CenterState's potential. When one troubled bank is allowed to purchase the assets of a failed bank -- which is what happened when CenterState took over the deposits of failed Ocala National Bank -- it's logical that investors figure now is as good a time as any to jump on the bandwagon of haters. As CAPS member IdiotFoolSavant put it:

everyone hates it. people are short that are better and smarter than me. why not follow?

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?