Wall Street's Buy List

Actions speak louder than words, as the old saying goes. So why does the media focus so much attention on what Wall Street says about companies, instead of what it does with them?

Luckily for Wall Street watchers, the Internet brings us MSN Money's list of which companies the institutions are buying. True, we should be as skeptical of Wall Street's actions as we are of its words. But when the 125,000-plus lay and professional investors on Motley Fool CAPS agree with Wall Street's opinions, it just might be time for some buying.

Here's the latest edition of Wall Street's Buy List, alongside our investors' opinions of the companies involved:

Companies are selected from the "Institutional Ownership Up Last Month" list published on MSN Money on the Saturday following close of trading last week. Recent price provided by Yahoo! Finance. CAPS ratings from Motley Fool CAPS.

Wall Street vs. Main Street
Wall Street is buying these stocks hand over fist, and Main Street investors are ... happy to let 'em. For the most part, CAPS investors remain decidedly unenthused about Wall Street's fave five this week -- but there's one notable exception.

TransMontaigne Partners isn't exactly a name that rolls off the tip of investors' tongues, but it got a quick 15 seconds of fame last week. 60 Minutes painted the company as a major player in yesteryear's oil price spike, as CBS discussed megabanker Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) -- which does, in fact, have a sizeable interest in the firm. The company's business actually looks pretty mundane on the surface. Basically, TransMontaigne offloads oil from tankers, stores it, and ships it downstream to customers like Valero (NYSE:VLO) and Marathon Oil (NYSE:MRO).

Pretty simple business model. But is it investable? Let's see what our primetime players have to say:

The bull case for TransMontaigne Partners 
At the beginning of last month, CavalierGator liked TransMontaigne for its: "Depressed price, low p/e (5.7), relatively safe earnings over the next year, and high stable dividend. What more can you ask for right now?"

A couple of weeks later, mercury14 pointed out: "Revenue Growth is phenomenal and long term debt is 1/3 the industry standard. Looking at the numbers, [TransMontaigne Partners] is a long term winner!"

And then there's the veritable book that EarningsPower wrote about TransMontaigne early last year, which led off with a rhetorical question that Lenin would've applauded:

For the most part, why take the risk of exploration and production when you can control the means of distribution? Especially in today's environment, where it in many ways is all about the dependability of cash flows. The more dependable the cash flows, the more someone will loan the company in question on favorable terms...and the more the company in question can take that low-cost money and deploy it for greater returns elsewhere when and where it makes sense. As an owner of transmission, one need not take the risk of generating or consuming the power. An investment in [TransMontaigne Partners] is not risk free, but no investment is (not even treasuries) and it is certainly easier to analyze and estimate the likely ROIC for these type of businesses than most.

EarningsPower has a lot more to say about TransMontaigne (read it all here), but you get the gist: He likes it. A lot. And I must say, there's a lot to like here (at least at first glance). The stock currently sells for an 8.2 P/E -- almost as cheap as when CavalierGator spotted the stock last month.

Granted, growth rates aren't quite as "phenomenal" for earnings as mercury14's comment suggests -- analysts are positing 4% long-term growth for the company. But come on, folks. With the stock already paying a 14% dividend, do you even need growth? So long as the dividend holds firm, it should suffice to squash the market's average 10% rate of return with ease.

Time to chime in
Then again, with a trailing dividend payout ratio of 111%, it looks to me like TransMontaigne is already paying out more money in dividends than it brings in, even though being a mastered limited partnership complicates things. Does that number worry you as much as it worries me? Tell us now.