I have a special story for you this week about a pair of stocks, but let’s begin with our usual market overview.

Well, I’ve been writing in this column that the market has been signaling that it wants to breakout to the upside, and it finally broke back above its 50-day moving average as we began the new month. Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF rankings are mostly holding steady, with Financials, Energy, Healthcare, and InfoTech still showing the best fundamental valuations.

If the bulls had been paying attention to the economic indicators reported last week, you’d assume the market would be down substantially by now.  The fact is, however, that the S&P 500 is just down about -0.4% for the past calendar week, and today it’s up over a full percent. Obviously, the bulls didn’t see the surprising drop in Consumer Confidence, which fell to 46.0 from 56.6 in January, its lowest reading since early last year.

There’s a whole lot of flip-flopping going on in the market right now.  Today it went nowhere on no news at all, but if you’d told me the economic indicators for last week were going to report bad-to-not-so-bad numbers and corporate earnings would be split between disappointing and just okay, I would have said that the market would tank.

The market is flashing signs that it might want to breakout to the upside, and Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF model seems to be projecting that it just might do it. This unbiased, value-oriented, quantitative model continues to favor sectors that are more dependent on economic growth, like Financials, InfoTech and Energy, which remain comfortably above the more defensive sectors like Utilities, Consumer Staples, and Telecom.

It worked .  .  . last week the market reversed Monday Mania, starting the week with a down day and ending in a bullish mood.

I’m pleased to say that the Bank of New York's ConvergEx Group today announced the results of its Jaywalk Independent Research Provider Performance Award Program for the second half of 2009. This program recognizes Jaywalk's Independent Research Providers (IRPs) for their exceptional research recommendations.