The Wall Street Buy List

"Actions speak louder than words."

It's an old saying, with more than a grain of truth to it, I'll warrant. So why is it that when the Wall Street firms merely "initiate coverage" or "upgrade" their ratings on a company, that gets all the news coverage? After all, those are only words, when what really matters is how the big boys act. Luckily for Wall Street watchers, finding out which professionals put their money where their corporate mouthpieces are has become relatively easy in this Internet age of ours. All we have to do is read MSN Money's list of which companies the Street is most actively buying.

But once we've done that, what next? After all, "Monkey see, monkey do" may not make for the soundest of investment strategies. That's where Motley Fool CAPS can help. The Fool's newest venture into the realm of collective intelligence collects ratings from more than 60,000 lay and professional analysts, then overweights the most successful raters' opinions to come up with a "CAPS rating" from one to a maximum five stars. If Wall Street's buying, and the smartest investors in Fooldom say they're right to do so, Fools should pay attention.

Let's meet today's list of contenders:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
"What were you thinking?!" That seems to be the question Main Street investors want to ask the experts this week. Out of these seven stocks that Wall Street was buying hand over fist over the last 30 days, only one gets so much as an ambivalent three-star rating from investors on CAPS. Although with one stock, Avalon Pharma, attracting too little interest to merit any rating at all, you never know. It might blow the curve (once more people notice it exists).

In the meantime, though, we've got no real contenders today. Wall Street may like these stocks, and if so ... it can have 'em.

Build-a-bull, anyone?
Or can it? With well more than 60,000 investors currently signed up for CAPS, earning their investing stripes in the biggest stock- and analyst-rating service online, surely there's someone out there who can figure out what Wall Street sees in these stocks. Are you that someone?

If that sounds like a rhetorical question, it isn't. You see, on CAPS, we depend on our community of investors to tell us what's hot and what's not -- and to explain why, as well. If you know a reason why your fellow investors should be bullish on any of the seven stocks named above, we're all ears. Come on over to CAPS and give us your best pitch.

Motley Fool CAPS: It's fun, it's free, and it just might make you famous.

Fool contributor Rich Smith does not own shares of any company named above. You can find him on CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handle TMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 308 out of more than 60,000 players. The Fool has a disclosure policy.