3 Hot Tips From a Proven Winner

If Warren Buffett jumped off a cliff, would you follow him blindly?

Of course you wouldn't, but it does make perfect sense to take in the investment strategies of a proven winner like Buffett. You could certainly do a lot worse than following in the footsteps of a winner.

On Motley Fool CAPS, there is an ample supply of winning investors who are sharing entire portfolios with the world. Today, I'm looking at all-star CAPS member tenmiles, who rarely makes a wrong move. Tenmiles has made more than 1,500 "outperform" or "underperform" calls over three years of CAPS investing with a mind-boggling 88.7% accuracy rate. Nobody is right all the time, but this player comes close.

What's going on here?
The best performers on tenmiles' scorecard so far are vaccine and antibody specialist Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS) and industrial manufacturer Crane (NYSE: CR). Our protagonist sees Emergent nearly doubling in value over the next three years because the "threat of biological terror is not going away," while Crane had recession fears built in and a good dividend yield when tenmiles chose it back in the fall of 2008.

But that's looking in the rearview mirror -- what I want to know is which stocks this proven master investor would invest in now. So here's a handful of tenmiles' latest CAPS picks:

Remember the old adage about jumping off a cliff? The same thing applies here: Just because tenmiles says a stock will or won't beat the market doesn't make it so. Rather than taking this as a buy-or-sell list, let's look a bit deeper as a starting point for your own research.

Every rose has its thorn
Tenmiles sure isn't afraid to swim upstream: Chipotle is an active recommendation of not one, not two, but three of our Foolish newsletters and we have a thumbs-down vote here.

"Too hot tamale after recent strength," writes tenmiles. Me, I'm one of those genetically challenged people who don't see how a menu reeking of cilantro to high heaven could ever make money, but I'm clearly in the minority here as Chipotle's food sells like hotcakes. I do admire Chipotle's disciplined growth strategy, which reminds me of the equally restrained mind-set of Buffalo Wild Wings (Nasdaq: BWLD), a stock I own myself.

With the new Model A development strategy in place, Chipotle is building restaurants for less and protecting margins above all else. The chain is set to open its first store in Europe this month, and international expansion can be a great growth driver from here on out. But all of this will take time to materialize, and the stock ain't getting any cheaper while you wait.

There's plenty of growth ahead for Chipotle, but the stock may indeed have gotten ahead of itself with a 62% climb in the last six months. I'm with tenmiles on Chipotle as a short-term investment, but long-term buyers could still make a profit on buying this stock today.

Lululemon follows a similar track -- quality business with excellent long-term prospects, but the athletic-wear tailor could be "doing downward dog pose fairly soon," as tenmiles wrote. No argument from me, because Lululemon looks mighty pricey with a P/E ratio north of 44 and a 47% six-month price climb. A price-to-sales ratio at six times trailing revenue makes Lululemon more than three times more expensive than retail rival Nike (NYSE: NKE) -- so I don't see what makes it worth that kind of price premium today.

Every thorn has its rose
Tenmiles isn't a total curmudgeon, though. Semiconductor testing specialist FormFactor got a thumbs-up vote and a friendly nod back in February: "debt free with large cash cushion -- buyer at $16.45 with two year horizon."

This is a five-star CAPS stock and another multi-newsletter pick. Plus, FormFactor has a history of not getting the respect the company deserves. Semiconductor manufacturing is one of my favorite sectors right now, and I have to agree that FormFactor could be one of your best routes to tapping into this sector.

As long as chip makers are building out or at least maintaining their manufacturing lines, there will be plenty of demand for testing equipment like FormFactor's. Today, there are races going on in just about every subsector of the semiconductor market to see who can build out their capacities faster. Ergo, this is absolutely the right time to jump aboard the FormFactor bandwagon.

What do we do now?
There are hundreds more stock picks on tenmiles' roster, and then hundreds of other top-notch investors sharing their secrets on CAPS. I suggest that you grab a free CAPS account and dive in on your own. Find your own favorite CAPS members, copy the best strategies, and add your own special sauce -- and maybe next time, I'll write about following in your footsteps.