Written by Rich B. Meier
TopEquityNews.com
Yesterday, we discussed using ETFs to generate trading ideas. Today, we are going to take it to the next step, following sector performance. Many studies have concluded that picking the right sector is equally, if not more important than picking the right stocks.
You know the clich’ a rising tide lifts all ships; the flip side is that a low tide sinks them too. Making a habit of following sector performance weekly could help investors lock on to more winners early and avoid losers before it is too late.
Every Wednesday, this column will run down the best and worst performing sectors from the previous week. Another feature will be to highlight a few stocks from the winning sectors that might be worthy of your consideration.
Last week, the top three gainers were:
Retail – Wholesale
Industrial Products
Computer & Technology
And the biggest losers:
Conglomerates
Construction
Autos – Trucks & Tires
Understand that other sites might list the performance of sectors/industries in a different order. We try to throw out stocks that can manipulate the true performance of most mainstream companies. Too many low priced securities can be manipulated and skew the numbers.
I don’t necessarily look strictly at performance numbers when examining the stocks within the group to build a target list. Rather, I look at how much of the stock was accumulated dollar wise as a percentage of the shares outstanding. In other words, if company A had an inflow of $20 million with a $100 billion market cap – it’s not as impressive as $10 million versus a $200 million market cap for company B – hope that makes sense.
The 10 stocks that had up volume totaling more than 1% of their market cap from the top- performing sectors include:
Syms Corp. (SYMS)
Netflix, Inc. (NFLX)
DragonWave Inc. (DRWI)
Universal Display Corp. (PANL)
OpenTable, Inc. (OPEN)
Veeco Instruments Inc. (VECO)
Silicon Motion Technology Corp. (SIMO)
WebMD Health Corp. (WBMD)
Aeropostale, Inc. (ARO)
Tekelec (TKLC)
According to my proprietary ranking system, Aeropostale, Inc. (ARO) has the highest grade with a B and Silicon Motion Technology Corp. (SIMO) has the most Earnings Power with a score of 9 on a scale of 11.
Slicing Up Sectors For Stocks is an article from: 
