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 135,000 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 we compare them with how the CAPS community sees their future.

Stock	"Lightning Round" Show Date	Cramer's Rating	CAPS Rating (Out of 5)
AT&T (NYSE: T)	Monday	Bullish	****
Boeing (NYSE: BA)	Monday	Bullish	***
Dendreon (Nasdaq: DNDN)	Tuesday	Bullish	**
Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM)	Tuesday	Bearish	**
First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR)	Wednesday	Bearish	**
ExxonMobil	Wednesday	Bearish	****
Delta Air Lines	Thursday	Bearish	*
Akamai	Thursday	Bearish	*****
Regions Financial (NYSE: RF)	Friday	Bearish	**
EMC (NYSE: EMC)	Friday	Bullish	*****

Cramer says …
It's not enough that Regions Financial has been nearly run into the ground, had to seek out $3.5 billion in TARP money last fall, and then had to raise another $2.5 billion after it failed the U.S. government's "stress test." Just after it secured the government's cash in November, its CEO also had the audacity to fly off with his family to the tony Greenbrier resort for a little R&R, at a cost to the bank of more than $17,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While the expense is not enormous relative to the size of the business, let's remember the lambasting that the auto executives received for a similar lack of discretion. It's with good reason that the corporate jet may be one of the most irksome pictures of executive excess -- even if there are good arguments in favor of their use. In any event, Jim Cramer has little use for Regions these days:

Oh, come on, man ... you're in a sea of winners, and you come to me with that two-bit, nonsense name! Sell, sell, sell. ... You should be ashamed of yourself! ... Why aren't you in Huntington Bancshares? ... Huntington Bancshares is a lot better!

CAPS says …
Such lapses in judgment notwithstanding, the CAPS community is divided over the caliber of management's quality. For example, bankerman13 finds Regions to be of a higher quality than other similarly situated companies:

regional bank with potential for great income based on franchise. Loan writeoffs are done with. Management is superior to other regional southeast franchises. Stock will be at [a price-to-sales ratio of] 15 in one year and then nice dividend will come back. [TARP] money will be paid back. You can count on it.

Yet even with nearly three-quarters of CAPS members thinking Regions Financial will outperform the market, Spencersb says Regions will continued to be dogged by the fiasco caused by its peddling of high-yield mutual funds. It's alleged that Regions' Morgan Keegan unit (RMK) marketed the funds as safe, low-risk investments when they were, in fact, loaded with risky, toxic assets: "Until management changes and the full impact of the RMK Funds debacle is known, this regional money supermarket will at best bump along near current levels."

Regions has subsequently lost numerous arbitration cases. Hundreds of arbitrations have yet to take place, and the cases that have already taken place have cost it millions.

Financial stocks aren't held in high esteem among CAPS members these days: The 425 stocks with the CAPS Commercial Banks tag garner a lowly two-star rating as a whole. Over the past month, they've lost on average about 4%, though that's still better than the 8.5% decline that Regions has suffered.