THE TIP OF OUR NOSE

Let the price of oil rally a few days and the next thing you know those Wall Street minions are already calling a bottom.

If that surprises you, it shouldn't. Fickle is as fickle does. And it's pretty hard to beat the Street on two things--creating deals and fickleness. In a CNBC story today, "Wall Street starting to pick an oil bottom," this was noted.

Barclays became the first big Wall Street firm to upgrade a major oil stock in the wake of the crash in prices, a tentative sign that there may finally be some value in the energy patch following a slaughter in the sector's shares.

Barclays upgraded BP to "overweight" and called for the company to slash production and fire employees in order to get costs in line after oil's drop. The firm lowered its Brent crude oil estimate to $70 a barrel for 2015. That's about where it was trading Wednesday.

We wrote about energy in September, "More From The Oil Patch," "Straw Hats And Energy Prices" in October and many other times in 2014.  Fickle, in case you don't get it, is another way of saying short term.

Practically everything Wall Street does is short term. You're seeing a consolidation already in energy with the nearly $35 billion friendly Hailliburton-Baker Hughes deal. Buffett's footprint in energy is another example and there will be more.

Rumors floated just recently about Royal Dutch Shell might be considering taking a shot at BP. We own BP and other energy stocks, have been adding on weakness and we like the prospects for  many things that go out farther than the tip of our nose.

Here's the CNBC piece http://www.cnbc.com/id/102236082.