View from the Observation Deck

1. Investors are always looking for tried and true angles to exploit. The seasonality effect comes to mind. Technology stocks tend to perform best in Q4 and Q1 of a calendar year. The Stock Trader's Almanac lists many.
2. Another angle that gets floated from time to time is buying last year's winners in the hopes they will continue to lead the market. A momentum strategy of sorts.
3. When it comes to investing in sectors, recent results suggest the practice is spotty at best. Over the past 20 years, only two sectors have delivered: Information Technology and Energy.
4. Those two sectors clearly had some help. Information Technology was the backbone of the Internet Revolution in the 1990s, while Energy caught a big boost following the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
5. Both scenarios were huge in scope, and not something an investor can bank on in any given calendar year.
6. There were only two calendar years in which a winning sector failed to repeat the next year, but finished in the top three. They were Materials (2001 & 2002) and Energy (2005 & 2006).
7. Perhaps the best angle is to stick with diversification, in our opinion.