The market has gone straight up over the past week since beginning the month of March by breaking through its 50-day moving average. The top and bottom of Sabrient’s SectorCast-ETF rankings look pretty similar to last week, although there has been some shuffling as Energy takes the top spot and Healthcare re-emerges in the top two.

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.

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.

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. 

After selling into year-end market strength to close out the year, net weekly net insider trading transactions (the number of individual buyers minus sellers) has finished January on a slightly positive note, as many insiders appear to have taken advantage of the market weakness to increase their net holdings.

The defensive posture taken by Sabrient’s fundamentals-based SectorCast-ETF model has allowed the long/short model portfolio to prosper in the face of the market weakness we’ve seen over the past week. The formerly hot Materials sector had begun to show signs of cooling off last week even as the overall market was hitting new highs, and over the past week it fell hard.