With Monday, April 20, being National Weed Day (a 4:20 takeoff), 24/7 Wall St. wondered which marijuana stocks were either the best in class or had the most upside. The problem in evaluating the legalized marijuana and medical marijuana stocks is that too many (or almost all) of them are not fully listed public companies with Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange. The biggest pure-play exception may be GW Pharmaceuticals PLC (NASDAQ: GWPH), for its proprietary cannabinoid pharmaceutical development platform. Its shares were actually unexciting on Monday, and maybe even disappointing if you are merely considering the 4/20 ties.

GW Pharmaceuticals may not get its day in the sun this week until Wednesday. One warning though: GW Pharma already got a news-pop in the shares when it announced additional data were coming. The company’s proprietary cannabinoid product platform has data coming at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) regarding its investigational medicine Epidiolex. It was telegraphed a week ago that data in the AAN would be expanded access programs for children and young adults with treatment-resistant epilepsy that have exhausted available treatment options.

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Additional data will be presented in a poster at the AAN Annual Meeting on 22 April at 6:15 p.m. ET, at which time GW will make an additional disclosure. The company said:

The data provide treatment effect information on a total of 137 patients who have at least 12 weeks of Epidiolex exposure. Safety data is provided on 213 patients, representing these 137 patients plus additional patients still in their first 12 weeks of treatment …

Patients in the Epidiolex expanded access program included those with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS), epilepsy types that can lead to intellectual disability and lifelong seizures, as well as 10 other types of severe epilepsy. Many have extreme and rare forms of epilepsy including several patients with major congenital structural brain abnormalities.

What investors need to know about last week’s GW Pharma rally is that shares rose from $96.18 to $108.75 — and the move was on a much larger share volume of more than 2.5 million shares. It trades roughly 200,000 shares a day when there is no news or serious interest in the company.

Also, GW Pharma shares hit an all-time high of $116.42 last Friday, with a high close of $114.00 as well.

Investors will want to pay close attention to what additional data are released this Wednesday. If the stock already rallied sharply on vague news last week, does the news have to be off the charts for a rally to be seen again this week? The stock was actually down almost 1% at $112.89 in late morning trading on Monday, and GW’s market cap was $2.2 billion.

A lot of good news has already been baked in on GW Pharma, as its 52-week trading range is $44.60 to $116.42. GW Pharma has a consensus analyst price target of $123 and a highest analyst target of $147 from analysts. Just keep in mind that only four analysts are actively counted as having formal ratings and price targets.

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As far as the upside calls, Piper Jaffray is the lead call, with the $147 target price. Leerink recently raised its price target to $120 from $102. Now keep in mind that the consensus pool of estimates sees very limited revenues ahead in 2015 and 2016, with sharp losses expected in each year: 2015 revenue of $47.3 million ($58.5 million highest est.) and 2016 revenue of $40 million ($70 million highest est.).

One last consideration is GW’s short interest. This was at a year-high of 2,186,122 shares short as of the March 31 settlement date.

Is it irony or a paradox that the “best marijuana stock” was trading lower on National Weed Day?

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