Looking at sectors

Bless this mess.

We are way overdue for a buy. Someone suggested looking at sectors to get an idea of where to narrow things down. What sort of sectors are doing particularly well (and might continue to do so)? Which sectors aren't doing well but might bump up soon? Google Finance also gives the top five gainers and losers (by volume, price, market cap, etc). These are limited to relatively large cap stocks (i.e .bigger companies), which should, in theory be more stable for most of the time. These might be good places to start.

Really what we're trying to do is make sense of the data we see. We'd like to be able to speculate as to why something is up or down. So, we look at a trend and try and figure out it

Take a look at energy over five years, one year, and year-to-date, respectively:

What could that mean? 

Also, current events might be a good source if information. Say, solar panels are in the news, what does the mean for the energy sector? What about secondary industries? The point we're trying to make is this might be a good line of reasoning to figure out investment prospects. But, of course that means we won't be buying anything today. 

Profit!

Next time, we should narrow our focus down to a few sectors (tech--the best and energy--the worst).