Over the past year, we have been hearing a lot of news about soaring crude oil prices. The easiest thing that we could think about is investing our money into independent oil refiners. Companies such as Frontier Oil (NYSE: FTO), Valero Energy (NYSE: VLO), Tesoro (NYSE: TSO), Alon USA Energy (NYSE: ALJ) or Western Refining (NYSE: WNR) are among those potential stocks on the waiting list.

Though it may seem surprising, Kiplinger.com advises us of exactly the opposite. Kiplinger underlines the fact that refiners represent a way to loose a lot of money... contrary to pipelines, oil producers and energy service companies. This came as the result of people's needs to transform crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel or heating oil.

The big difference between the cost of crude and the price of refined products is called the "crack spread", and this is where the problem comes in. In May of last year, the crack spread peaked at $27, and even moved up as high as $40 in some locations. This compares to the historical norm of closer to $20. But starting with the spring of 2007, things started changing, and the spread began to narrow... now the spread has fallen down to around $8.50 for some companies.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Goldman Sachs, Lehman and TD AmeriTrade were today's noteworthy downgrades:

• UBS downgraded Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to Neutral from Buy. The firm believes liquidity problems and de-leveraging in the capital markets will get worst before they get better; UBS also downgraded Bank of New York (NYSE: BK), State Street (NYSE: STT) and Invesco (NYSE: IVZ) to Neutral from Buy.
  
• Following Bear Stearns' (NYSE: BSC) downfall, UBS also downgraded Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) to Neutral from Buy and said the company could be the "next on the list" for the confidence/liquidity crisis by some investors.
  
• TD AmeriTrade (NASDAQ: AMTD) was downgraded to Neutral from buy at UBS and to Market Perform from Outperform at Friedman Billings. Friedman Billings downgraded TD Ameritrade citing slowing client activity as well as margin compression.

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• JP Morgan cut Portugal Telecom (NYSE: PT) to Underweight from Neutral.
  
• Goldman downgraded Marathon Oil (NYSE: MRO) and Holly Corp (NYSE: HOC) to Neutral from Buy and removed Frontier Oil (NYSE: FTO) from its Conviction Buy List.

Three years ago yesterday, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) became public. Since then, those investors who could get past the seemingly high valuation of $85 per share have been generously rewarded with a hefty return of 478%. Google has been a perfect example of the need to look forward when analyzing growth companies. At the time of its IPO, value investors (rightfully so) appeared on CNBC to tell investors that Google was overvalued. However, because Google was able to grow its earnings per share at such an unbelievable rate, the stock's IPO price represents just 8x last year's earnings and 5.5x this year's. Given the choice to buy Google at $85 per share now I'd bet every value, growth, stupid and smart investor would jump on the opportunity to pick up the stock.

But Google hasn't been the only incredible performer during the last three years. In fact, Business Week has an interesting article listing the companies and stocks that outperformed Google during the last three years. You'll find that many of these stocks rose due to some huge underlying trend that these companies were able to ride out for powerful growth.

For example, high oil prices have been a huge trend for profits. Frontier Oil (NYSE: FTO) was able to return 611% to investors over the last three years as the company rode the increased oil prices to make huge refining profits. Foster Wheeler (NYSE: FWLT), with its focus on energy, pharmaceuticaul and environmental infrastructure products, was able to return 557%.