In slowing, volatile market, energy and materials sectors hold promise

Brian Dress, director of research at Left Brain Investment Research, discusses how the firm tracks exchange-traded funds as a way of gauging trends across industries and as the market has been going through its current rotation, the ETFs have been confirming positive trends for energy and materials companies. Dress notes that exploration and production companies and pipeline firms are particularly well-positioned right now, pointing out that oil and energy currently hold about half of their normal weighting in the Standard and Poor's 500 but that they could quickly recoup that lost ground.