TMFSpiffyPop (99.24)

One Million Picks

August 10, 2007 – Comments (8)

First, a preface. An apology, really. Here it is: I am very sorry that I am talking about anything but subprime-lending woes, stock-market volatility, and whether we should just sell everything and put it in T-bills (if they're even safe!). Very Foolish of me to veer off the front-page financial topics that preoccupy our major media. But I'm here to mark a milestone. And in a really weird but really important way, I believe this milestone is actually more consequential and relevant to your long-term fortunes as an investor than whether the market bounces back up or down at today’s close. Preface concluded.

One Million Picks 

Whether you have been with Motley Fool CAPS from the very beginning, or just clicked in for the first time yesterday because your friend said you had to see what it's all about, I hope you will appreciate that CAPS has just received its one millionth pick! For the record, the pick was an Outperform on IMAX made by krishnay at 2:03 PM EDT today -- and for that, he/she will receive a Microsoft Xbox 360 thanks to our partner MSN.

But think on it. In just over a year, our revolutionary community intelligence database has filled up with transparent, accountable stock picks from Main Street to Wall Street. Every pick, every investor, every stock has been rated, ranked, and scored, a permanent archive of meritorious (and sometimes meretricious -- yes, pull out your dictionary if necessary, fellow Fools -- that's one to know) actions that have helped us all find better stocks and follow the best investors.

How many Fools -- and by extension, investors outside The Motley Fool who find out about CAPS through friends or read Motley Fool takes on Yahoo, MSN, and AOL -- have managed to avoid or exit stocks of subprime lenders or homebuilders, most recently, because our database months ago indicated that the top-performing investors and minds in our 15-year-old Fool Community thought these stocks were going DOWN and should be avoided?

(And hold on now, is that our own TMFEldrehad, with a Player Rating of 99.99, who has just this week now turned positive on homebuilders? Check it out. It's all out there in CAPS!)

Perhaps most interesting and consequential of all to me is that, across the tens of thousands of rated investors we now have on CAPS (recently grown further thanks to our new long-term partnerships with MSN and Zecco), the Score achieved by the MEDIAN CAPS player is 21.00 In other words, we who are both providing CAPS community intelligence and benefiting every day from CAPS community intelligence, are on average well ahead of the market with our Outperforms and Underperforms.

You know what that means, don't you? It means The Motley Fool is living up to its vision statement of "Building the World's Greatest Investment Community." And it means that CAPS is living up to its promise -- look again at the top of every page on CAPS, dear Fools -- of "Investors helping investors beat the market." Whether it's finding winning stocks, or avoiding losing stocks. (It's actually both.) And our community has focused that intelligence broadly across the market, creating CAPS ratings on almost 5000 stocks, helping all of us to evaluate the stocks that we are investing in today, and to find the stocks that we want to invest in tomorrow.

And so whether the market closes up or down today, comes flying back next week or sells off another few percentage points, THAT is why I believe the promise and the reality of One Million Picks in CAPS is ultimately far more consequential and relevant to all of us.

Here's to the next million. Fool on! --David