God, Man and the Beatles at Old OU

I awoke Friday a confirmed atheist.

How could an all-powerful Odin, Zeus or Abrahamic God the Father allow a guy with Bible citations on his eye-black tape to beat the noble Sam Bradford, obvious offspring of whichever immortals bend men to their will? Maybe I was a mixed-up kid who couldn't hang his hat on one supernatural being. But my faith in Him (be He in Heaven, Asgard or atop Mount Olympus) returned as I reconsidered the BCS championship game. OU had its chances and could have easily won. In the end, I believe God was telling the crimson and cream: "Hey, you have to work with Me here, people."

My only consolation is that Tim Tebow, the darling of hagiographers masquerading as broadcasters and sportswriters, received, yes, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for taunting. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Which brings me to the existential dilemma posed by the Beatles, who ingeniously described a lover as a day tripper and elsewhere insisted that she had a ticket to ride. I can see Miss Market in the former, leading us on only to dash our hopes in 2008. This year, though, she's the one giving us a ticket to ride. The girl that's driving me mad is not going away.

Pullbacks are consolidation phases, not the renewal of a bear market. Buy on the dips will turn out to be the theme for 2009. Resistance to this outcome will more and more be confined to cults who insist the end is near only to be left shivering on the mountaintop waiting yet another day for the rapture that will save the elect, who seem to practically salivate at the prospect of bread lines and ruined investors.

The facts are: government stimulus and tax cuts are all but assured; monetary policy has reflation as its only goal; interest rates are low, though destined to rise as the facts sink in; oil prices are still low, but also sure to keep rising as the rebooting of the world economy continues apace.

This broad brush outlook is necessary, but not sufficient. Sector allocation and special situation analysis can beat the index, not only relatively but absolutely.

Buys are oil, other commodities, innovative tech names(e.g., PALM) semiconductors (AMD), and some REITs (DDR). Sells are Treasuries (rising interest rates) and financials (re-regulation and public distaste), excepting the regional institution or two with a focused lending policy and trusted management (BANF). Please check out previous posts for starting prices of these securities (except BANF, whose start price and date will be added to the list tomorrow--I'm down in this name) in Kev's portfolio. Updated performance statistics to come at the end of trading Monday.

For those who trust in omens from the sporting life, three of the four NFL underdogs won outright this weekend. The fourth lost outright and against the spread. Alas, I took all four underdogs. You can look it up. Seventy-five percent isn't bad. Not that I'm into cults or religion or anything.