INVESTING: Role reversal: Oil is the Amazon.com of yesteryear

On Saturday mornings when I was a kid, I watched the “Superheroes” cartoon and I soaked up all its greatness.

Superman, Aquaman, The Green Lantern, the whole crew. And sometimes, my heroes had to battle a group of bad guys who were evil opposites of themselves. It was like some kind of twisted alter-ego thing. I wonder if the executives atop the favorite tech companies of 1999 are feeling like Superman when he had to fight his evil twin Bizarro. Dell, eBay and other former high-fliers must feel as if they are up against the stock market Legion of Doom.

In 1999, the ticket to profits on Wall Street was to sell anything bricks and mortar and buy anything clicks and eyeballs. Intel shares were going up 10 percent a month, and Yahoo about 25 percent. Some of the stranger stocks, like TheGlobe.com, seemed to be doubling every few weeks. Meanwhile, back at the crusty old boardrooms of mainstay corporate America, stocks like Honeywell and Boeing were sliding on a daily basis. It was a tale of two markets, and today it is the exact opposite.

Intel can’t buy an uptick, eBay is getting crushed, and Dell has the trendline of a falling brick. But those crusty old codgers in those boring boardrooms are seeing a different scene. Caterpillar has almost doubled in the last year. Boeing is up 25 percent just in 2006. Investors are snapping up oil stocks the way they did Amazon in 1998. Remember when analyst Henry Blodget made his famous prediction that Amazon would climb from $150 a share to $400-and he was right within a week?

The action today demonstrates Wall Street’s personality. There have always been cycles and seasons as to where investors move. On the surface, it seems loosely governed by valuations, but to me it feels more like mood. Valuation, after all, is such a wide-ranging, relative idea.

The Internet stocks were overvalued in 1997, but they went on to triple from there. In my opinion, people are paying too much for Caterpillar today, but the stock market doesn’t care about my opinion. Investors are going to carry the stock too far, then put it into the doghouse for a few years of hurt. But I don’t know how much more it can run before they change their minds. And with a price-to-earnings ratio of just 14, Intel seems like a value to me. But I have a feeling the stock might get savaged further.

Based on the technical data I pour through every day, it looks like the market is growing more dangerous. A lot of brick-and-mortar stocks still could go higher in the near term, but more stocks like Intel are falling by the wayside.

Since the market hit a high Jan. 11, cash has outperformed the S&P 500. If you are holding any of these Legion of Doom stocks, keep a close eye on them, and if they falter a little, sell right away.

This point on will be like the “March of the Penguins.” Once they are in the water, that’s it.

Stocks aren’t likely to recover much until the approaching bear market ends. And there is no telling at this point how much damage will happen between now and then.