Shares of Delek US Holdings (Ticker: DK) are up more than 40 percent so far in 2013 and more than 170 percent over the past 12 months. And while they took a bit of a breather of late, Jack Hough at Barron's over the weekend wrote that the oil refiners active in the center of the country will continue to benefit from the difference between what they pay for the West Texas Intermediate crude and what consumers are paying for refined products, which are based more on the price of Brent oil. That dynamic is expected to be a temporary one — even though it's persisted for a good while — and one analyst says that is creating a virtuous cycle of sorts.

Belief that the refiner boom will end keeps investment low. That strains capacity and keeps the boom running. Over the past six quarters, Wall Street analysts have consistently underestimated refiner earnings. They still are.

Barron's Jonathan Laing writes that shares of Ryman Hospitality Properties (Ticker: RHP) could climb more than a third from their current level around $40 based on "the inevitable closing of the valuation gap" between it and other hospitality-oriented real estate investment trusts. Maybe, but one part of his argument likely won't contribute: Laing cites Gabelli analyst Amit Kapoor as saying the company could spin off its Opry- and Ryman-anchored entertainment division — even though the company less than five months ago flat out said no-go to the idea.

Sam Mamudi at Barron's says consumer spending on new cars was a big part of last year's better GDP numbers and that the outlook for this year looks pretty good, too. The auto sector is a big reason Middle Tennessee's durable goods manufacturing sector averaged year-over-year job growth of 4.5 percent through the first 11 months of 2012. If car sales hold up in 2013, look for area manufacturing employment — driven by Nissan in Smyrna and GM in Spring Hill — to again be a powerful driver of the local economy.

Barron's this weekend wrote a bullish piece about the prospects for Corrections Corp. of America shares, pointing to the longer-term trend of government entities shifting spending to the private sector and to the benefits of a mooted conversion to a real estate investment trust. (That discussion has been spurred on in part by two hedge funds.) But CCA shares (Ticker: CXW) are up only about 1 percent in the first hour of Monday trading — albeit in the face of a down market — on what looks to be a heavy volume day.

Despite recent reports that indicate home prices are falling, those figures are actually rising, according to Barron's, and data coming out this summer should point to stabilization and give a boos to builders and certain stocks.

The blog quotes Citi analyst Josh Levin and data from Altos showing home prices are rising on a month over month basis.

''This really is going to be solely a 2010 issue,'' says Kevin Milota, the lodging analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities, who attended the Nashville investor meeting. ''Investors can have confidence that Gaylord is going to hit its deadlines and its benchmarks.''