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Although it's hard not to fall in love with the stock-trading baby in the E*Trade commercials, shares in the company have been anything but loveable over the past year.
The company dove into the mortgage business at a terrible time, and ended up saddled with huge losses. The company is still slugging it out today only because it got a hefty investment from Citadel Investment Group.
At MSN CAPS, there are more than 2,000 investors predicting the fortunes of this battered stock. But so far none has had E*Trade's number like CAPS All-Star "jwfoster," who has made three short-term calls -- all bullish -- on E*Trade Financial (ETFC, news, msgs) since August, and earned a whopping 125 points on those calls.
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Player jwfoster is one of CAPS' All-Stars -- players with a rating of 80 or greater. He's managed an impressive accuracy of 76% on his stock-picking calls while racking up more than 3,500 points.
And E*Trade hasn't been his only great call. He made a prescient "outperform" call last summer on Canadian energy company Oilsands Quest (BQI, news, msgs). He also made "underperform" calls in early 2007 on two mortgage lenders -- IndyMac Bancorp (IMB, news, msgs) and Countrywide Financial (CFC, news, msgs).
So what is jwfoster looking at these days? Below are some of his recent calls on CAPS. While not all of these picks may pan out, they could be a good place to start additional research.
| Company | Sector | Closing price on date picked (May 2) | June 24 close | CAPS rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Uranium | $34.95 | $38.89 | ***** | |
Mining equipment | $65.05 | $75.99 | ***** | |
Investments | $30.38 | $34.20 | ***** |
Although the market has struggled since taking a turn south last October, investors could have done much better by doing what jwfoster has done -- shorting financial and real estate companies while going long on energy and commodity stocks.
More from MSN Money and The Motley Fool
Cameco's business is selling uranium, but it can't blame its problems on the lackluster uranium market -– it has long-term contracts with its customers that protect it from prevailing market prices. The company is facing rising production costs and a good amount of uncertainty around a few of its big production projects.
Stock Chart (Year)
Cameco
Of course, nuclear power has some downsides that, say, solar power doesn't. And as pencils2 also noted, political foot-dragging on nuclear power is a big risk to Cameco's growth.
However, as the costs of fossil fuels -- in both dollars and environmental impact -- continue to rise, the antinuclear crowd in Washington may be forced to reconsider its stance.
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What's your take on Cameco? Get in the action by clicking to CAPS. It's absolutely free and already has more than 110,000 stock pickers chipping in to find the best stocks out there.
This article was reported and written by Matt Koppenheffer for The Motley Fool. At the time of publication, he owned none of the stocks mentioned.
Editor's note: MSN CAPS is an investor intelligence service hosted by The Motley Fool. Companies are rated by players to outperform or underperform the market and are subsequently ranked from one star (the lowest) to five stars. Between Jan. 3, 2007, and May 12, 2008, five-star companies outperformed the SPDR Trust, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500, by an average of 9 points, annualized, while one-star companies underperformed by an average of 15.6 points, annualized.
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