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 145,000 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 ...
Now that Bank of America has repaid its TARP loan, CEO Ken Lewis is ready to walk away from the job, opening up the search for a new leader. No doubt only partially tongue in cheek, Jim Cramer says he would be a better executive than those who nearly drove the bank into the ground.

Listen, I want the Bank of America job, I absolutely promise you that I could do a better job than whoever gets this job ... I got the legal thing ... I got the bank thing, I got the hedge fund thing, I got the public relations thing which is the thing that they really need, however I'm probably not going to get the job, which is unfortunate. But I do own the stock for ActionAlertsPlus.com and I like Bank of America.

CAPS says ...
There might not be as many takers for the position over at CAPS (well, there is that huge pay package), even though just 13% of the community members who rated the stock think Bank of America won't outperform the broader market. As rhino1121 says, there's still a pretty big shoe waiting to drop at the bank. The near-collapse experienced this year was no fun, but the coming implosion in the commercial real estate market won't be a picnic, either.

[Bank of America] has a lot [of] commercial loans coming due, I expect to see all the so called to big to fail banks to take an even bigger hit in the next year. What['s] coming in this next year will make the last meltdown look like a burp. This one will be devastating to the big banks, once again they will have to turn to [government] bail outs to stave off complete melt down

This Fool says ...
That Fool's got a point. Bank of America's TARP repayment gives it a competitive leg up on regional banks, which haven't been able to pay back their loans yet and don't have as many alternative businesses to tap for money. Bank of America wrote off almost $2 billion worth of commercial real estate through the first three quarters of 2009 and has an allowance for such losses of more than $35 billion.

Regional banks have significant exposure to the commercial real estate market, and many are still saddled with the restrictions imposed by TARP. By getting out from under that TARP yoke, Bank of America can balance out its exposure through consumer lending and asset management, let alone through the profit generated by its brokerage services and securities underwriting. That's a substantial advantage that it will be able to press to take more business from the regional banks.

But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. views commercial real estate as the biggest threat to the banking industry, and Bank of America's exposure keeps it in a precarious place should conditions worsen.

Your say
While CAPS members may stand with Jim Cramer or on opposite sides of the field, the investor intelligence community is more than what some All-Stars think, even if they are TV personalities. But what do you think? Is Cramer right? No need to hedge your thoughts on CAPS, so why not look at Bank of America's CAPS page and let us know if this is a stock we can still bank on?

Motley Fool CAPS is a great place to start your own research on these stocks. 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. Best of all, it's free.