Crude oil peaked at 100 in January, dipped into a trading range of 86 to 94 for about a month, and has now broken out to the upside reaching 98 this morning. This has allowed a number of oil drilling/exploration and oil equipment/services companies to rally and they are doing quite well today.

When the market is in a down trend it makes sense to balance not only your stocks by sector, but the amount of cash you have and the amount of hedging in your account.

This market is still not out of the woods and stocks will struggle as we go forward for some time. I still like the banks with the Fed continuing to lower rates another 1% over the next 4 months.

Yahoo March 32.50 Calls

Not too much selection in stocks lately but I have found several categories that I like in addition to two banks that are growing and make sense even when stocks in general aren't going up.