Stock Smackdown: Cramer vs. CAPS

There's no denying that Mad Money host Jim Cramer is entertaining, popular, and passionate. On many occasions, he's even right. So he's smart, funny, and the closest thing to a stock market rock star -- but is he smarter than you?

Cramming for Cramer
The Fool's free investing community, Motley Fool CAPS, aggregates the opinions of more than 140,000 members to assign ratings for each stock's likelihood of outperforming or underperforming the market.

Below, we look at some top stocks that Cramer picked and panned during last week's "lightning rounds," and compare them with how the CAPS community sees their future.

Cramer says:
It's not so much that Jim Cramer thinks natural gas specialist Williams Companies is a bad investment -- just that he finds so many other better opportunities available in the sector:

Williams Companies is interesting because when I was at my hedge fund where I used to manage money ... I felt that it was too heavily levered but I had a huge hit when they decided to decouple the company ... these days, I got so many others that are better ... look it is a terrific natural gas company ... but if I want yield, I want rather go with Kinder Morgan Partners ... and if I want growth, I would rather go with Devon.

CAPS says:
What do investors think about prospects for the pipeline purveyor? Around 96% of the CAPS members rating Williams Companies believe it will outperform the market. Despite the headwinds of lower natural gas prices, Williams turned in better-than-expected earnings -- though still down substantially from last year -- even as revenue took a hit. Increased production volumes and lower costs apparently helped cushion the bottom line.

Over the past month, Williams has performed well, up more than 5% while the broad market has declined by 2%. The decline in natural gas prices has certainly weighed on its operations in recent quarters, but it expects prices to rise again over the next two years.

This Fool says:
According to the Energy Information Administration, natural gas inventory in underground storage rose to 3,759 billion cubic feet, a record high. Naturally, prices have fallen, dipping to roughly $4.59 last week. Yet production is on the rise once more. Baker Hughes says the number of natural gas rigs drilling in the United States increased by four, to 725 rigs. That's only going to push inventories higher.

While some analysts believe an improving economy will push natural gas back to equilibrium, I'm not so sure that Williams' gains are sustainable, especially in the current economic environment. I'd have to say I agree with Cramer. There are better opportunities out there; I just don't think they're in the natural gas sector at the moment.

The recovery is extremely fragile, and I'm rather pessimistic about its ability to continue. As such, I'm heading over to Williams Companies' CAPS page to rate it to underperform the market. Join me there to let me know how you feel -- it's free -- or leave your remarks in the comment section below.