As a reminder, every penny per gallon (gasoline) change equates to roughly $1 billion of annualized spending that arguably could be spent on other items.

Because investors overreact to good news and underreact to bad news on stocks they like, and do just the opposite to stocks that are out of favor. Past perception seems to dictate future performance. And it takes time to change those perceptions.

When the stock market correction comes, we tend to underreact. While we do not like the surprise, we tend to think of it as maybe a one time thing. Things, we believe, will soon get back to normal. We do not scale back our expectations sufficiently for our growth stocks (or vice-versa), so the stage is set for another surprise and more reaction. It apparently takes years for this to work itself out.

Concerns over the job environment. Very few feel safe, either from being out sourced to foreign climes or being replaced by technology. As noted last week, it is the latter that is the real culprit in the jobless recovery.

Business Week tells us that for each 1% rise in productivity we lose up to 1.3 million jobs a year. Of the 2.7 million jobs lost over the past three years, foreign out-sourcing has only been responsible for around 300,000 jobs, or around 11%.