Wall Street's Wish 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 27,000 lay and professional analysts, then overweights the most successful raters' opinions to come up with a "CAPS rating" from one to five stars (five being the best). If Wall Street's buying and the smartest investors in Fooldom say they're right to do so, then that should get your attention.

Let's meet today's list of contenders:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
Wall Street's top picks get a generally positive reception from Main Street this week. Three earn ratings above average, two are right in the middle, and only two stocks are either panned or ignored by the average investor. Because we're looking for companies where these investor boulevards intersect, we focus on the top half: MedImmune, Echelon, and Mobius. Of the three, MedImmune gets the most attention on CAPS, with nearly twice as many investors chiming in on its prospects as the other two companies get combined. Incidentally, it's also got a lot more heft, with a market cap roughly 16 times the throw weight of Echelon and Mobius combined. But can a big company outperform two others, with more room to grow? Let's find out.

The bull case for MedImmune
Over at Motley Fool CAPS, 83 out of 93 of our fellow investors give MedImmune the thumbs up, including 32 out of 34 "All-Stars" on record. Here's what these super-investors have to say about MedImmune:

• Gumpster sees MedImmune's FluMist as "a nice intermediate-term opportunity," but argues that the company's future success will derive more from other sources. Namely: improved profitability of Synagis/Numax, "royalty inflow from Merck and GlaxoSmithKline's HPV vaccines," and "investments made over the past few years in Medimmune Ventures (its venture cap arm)."
  
  
• SaintCroix agrees, pointing out that: "One of the cool things about MedImmune is that they are running their own little biotech venture capital business, MedImmune Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary. They've invested $200 million dollars in a score of young promising biotechs."
  
  
• Grandpa104 adds that: "With the threat of avian influenza still out there, this company run by some very smart folks could benefit."

Time to chime in
Personally, MedImmune's lofty P/E gives me the shivers. But as revealed on Sunday, our panel of experts seems to have called this one right -- Britain's AstraZeneca is getting ready to shell out $15.2 billion to buy MedImmune in its entirety.

Is AstraZeneca getting a deal? Or ingesting a high-priced virus? Head on over to Motley Fool CAPS and tell us what you think.

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 ranked 137th out of more than 27,000 raters. GlaxoSmithKline is a Motley Fool Income Investor pick. The Fool has a disclosure policy.