Great Call on News Corp.! What's Next?

Why should we be talking about News Corp. (NYSE:NWS)? In a word, Avatar. From a financial perspective at least, the James Cameron blockbuster seems to have lived up to the hype and then some, racking up $1 billion in worldwide box office receipts so far.

Sure, one big movie is hardly reason to jump at a huge corporation like News Corp., but the significance of Avatar may well extend beyond the movie itself. As my colleague Anders Bylund recently pointed out, the technology used in the film could be the next big leap forward in moviemaking. A leap that may help fight the trend toward consumers skipping theaters in favor of a cheaper at-home experience.

Avatar or not, members of the Motley Fool CAPS community haven't taken a particularly bullish view on News Corp. The stock carries a middling three-star rating out of a possible five.

However, that hasn't stopped quite a few CAPS members from scoring big points from timely calls on News Corp.'s stock. ocdan, for instance, current score leader for News Corp., has racked up 125 points on the stock.

ocdan is one of CAPS' All-Stars -- players with a rating of 80 or greater -- and has managed a stock-picking accuracy of 53% while racking up more than 2,500 points. News Corp. isn't this player's only great call. Here's a look at a few of the other prescient picks:

Data from CAPS.

So what has this investor been looking at more recently? Here are a few of the most recent calls on CAPS:

Data from CAPS.

While not all of these picks may pan out, they could be a good place to start further research. I decided to take a closer look at Goldman Sachs.

Evil or extraordinary?
A quick look at some of the CAPS commentary about Goldman Sachs shows how torn the investment community is over this high-flying house of finance.

In late October, CAPS member scoylesays unloaded on Goldman for the way that the company operates:

high frequency trading has manipulated many stocks down taking investors money, goldman is the evil corporation, profit by any means, my hope is karma pays them back one day.

On the other side of the debate, we find MoneyWorksforMe, who gave Goldman's stock a thumbs-up at the end of last year and said:

The best in the business. These guys bet against subprime while most were still drinking the koolaid. Will continue to benefit immensely along with [Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)] from increased M&A and less competition. Investors are still underestimating the earnings power of these two firms.

My colleague Morgan Housel has been very vocal about Goldman on Fool.com. Back in October, he highlighted just how successful Goldman has been lately thanks to its money-printing trading operations. More recently, though, Morgan lamented the changes that Goldman has gone through over the past decade, and suggested that Goldman's gravy train could soon come to a halt.

During The Motley Fool's "Scariest Stocks" series, I shared some of my own thoughts on why the prospect of investing in Goldman makes me break out in a cold sweat.

So where does this leave us? I'd point to Goldman's three-star CAPS rating -- smack in the middle of the range. CAPS members are neither bullish enough to push the stock into the upper echelons, nor bearish enough to bury it with tainted stocks like Fannie Mae's. If you ask me, with more than 5,000 stocks rated on CAPS, I think investors can find better bets than Goldman.

But here's the important question: What's your take? Will Goldman continue to prove that it can make money in any market? Get in the action by clicking over to CAPS. It's absolutely free and already has more than 145,000 stock pickers chipping in to find the best stocks out there.

Think you may have a stock market loser taking up space in your portfolio? Check out my three signs of a terrible investment and see if it's time to sell.