Good Tuesday afternoon everyone. We hope you had a nice three-day weekend, but it's time to get back to work so let's just dive in. Yes, the market logged another gain today - the third one in a row. It was a tepid effort, however, marked by increasingly weaker progress and increasingly weaker volume. Take a look. This isn't the way a good breakout starts, though that's not to say this isn't the ultimate start of a breakout. There's still plenty of room for the S&P 500 to slide back, regroup, and then rekindle this effort again and next time do so on higher volume. Until we actually see it happen that way though, we can assume nothing. And yeah, a frothy trailing and forward-looking P/E are the impasses that could easily up-end this bullish effort. In other words, let's wait and see how this all pans out before coming to any trading conclusions. The S&P 500 could fall all the way back to the 2049 area and still technically be in an uptrend. And for that matter, the S&P 500 could fall all the way back to a support zone around 1990 and still have a good shot at recovering. The answer all lies in what happens - and how it happens - during the retests. In the meantime, this breakout hit a wall today, suggesting at least the initial surge is out of gas. The best place to be at this point is on the sidelines. Let's cut things off right there for today, as we've got a lot more to get through with our feature commentary. Sector Drill-Down Shows Problems & Bright Spots While our analysis above was near-term in nature, those of you who've been reading the SCN newsletter for any length of time at all will know we only worry about charts to get a bead on the market's near-term movement. In the grand scheme of things (for the long haul) it's still a valuation-based dance. With that in mind, here's what's likely to be our next-to-last report card for Q4's earnings season. I say next-to-last because only about 85% of the S&P 500's constituents have reported last quarter's numbers, and I still intend to give you a final snapshot of the fourth quarter's numbers. Still, what we've got now is a pretty good idea of what we'll be reporting soon enough as the final score. Anyway, for Q4, the S&P 500 is on pace to earn $26.78. That's about 5% less than it earned in the same quarter a year earlier. You can blame the energy sector's miserable numbers for the bulk of last quarter's shortcoming, though I'll remind you again we can't blame weak oil prices for everything. Also, though it looks horrifying on our chart below, we can't blame telecom for the earnings tumble either. A couple of key telecom stocks booked some goofy accounting charges that technically led to operating losses, but they won't get booked again. Had it not been for those oddball expenses, telecom would have been profitable in the fourth quarter. Regardless, telecom only makes up about 3% of the market's total revenue, so this loss had a minimal impact on earnings. Energy makes up about 14% of the S&P 500's revenue, and as such its earnings decline took a much bigger toll on the broad market's results. As they say, read 'em and weep. Yeah, consumer staples was a surprising laggard. Truth be told, while I know I've been a bit of a pessimist on the 2015 earnings growth front (and still basically am), I also see a few pockets of strength to get excited about on our chart above. I'm not just talking about technology either. Heck, Apple (AAPL) alone drove the brunt of the nice earnings improvement for the technology sector, and single-handedly generated roughly 7% ($2.04 worth) of the S&P 500's total income of $26.78. There's still impressive growth from the industrials and discretionary stocks, and even though I don't like the group this year, healthcare stocks are still riding the Obamacare wave. Point being, you can still pick and choose your spots, even if the market as a whole is likely to be a little lackluster this year. In fact, one of my primary goals for 2015 is to make sure we help you navigate this year's tricky waters by keeping you focused on the strong areas and steered clear of the weak ones. Speaking of... We're going to be doing a ton more stuff with the data over the course of this week, but for today we wanted to whet your appetite with what we believe is one of the most powerful charts you can have in your trading arsenal -- a visual comparison of how each sector is doing, and specifically, how each sector's stocks are accelerating or decelerating. This is actually a chart you've seen from us before, so we're not going to give you the diatribe. We'll just point out each line is labeled (dashed), and if it's not clear where those dashed lines are pointing, then each line is color-coded with its label. We can't really see a lot on this chart we didn't know the last time we looked at it, but I do want to point out the industrial sector (maroon-ish) is perking up more so than other sectors are, moving into a more appropriate valuation. You can also see technology stocks (blue) have perked up, though Apple is doing most of that heavy lifting. Healthcare is rallying as well, though again, I'm not a fan. I also wasn't a fan of utility stocks a few weeks ago because they were so overbought and overvalued. Sure enough, they've been getting crushed. I guess that's my long-winded plug for industrials more so than for any other group right now. Like I mentioned above, we'll be diving into this data and sector-level earnings outlooks later this week. I truly believe getting a grip on sector rotation is the number one thing you can easily do to start getting more out of the market, so be sure to stick around. This is going to be a fun week as we finalize earnings season. From the Site We know a bunch of you are regular visitors to the website, but for those who aren't, what you get here in the newsletter is only a small sample of the kinds of great, actionable commentary available to you from our stable of contributors and researchers. And, as usual, we got the week started with a nice batch of worthy posts at the site. Here are three I think you have to look at. With oil prices rising again, and possibly back in a long-term uptrend, it's time to start thinking about the potential impact this may have on airline stocks that have benefited from super-cheap jet fuel. From here the name of the game is fuel hedging, which can help or hurt an airline stock, depending on how well or poorly it's done. Peter Graham looks at the potential impact of hedging on Virgin America (VA) and a couple of its peers. Last quarter's numbers will be posted on Wednesday morning, but there's a lot to think about before and after the announcement. Did you miss the recent runup from the genomic diagnostic industry? Maybe you didn't. James Brumley came across Response Genetics (RGDX) today, and recognized it wasn't as overbought and ripe for a pullback as peers Genetic Technologies Limited (GENE) and Rosetta Genomics (ROSG). Last but not least, the machine-2-machine and internet-of-things movement is well underway. In fact, it's one of the Elite Opportunity's top trade-worthy megatrends for this year. John Udovich took a look at one of the industry's more prolific names today... Sierra Wireless (SWIR). If you're looking for a pick or just want to know more about M2M/IoT, here's a great place to start. With all of that being said, if you're really looking for lost of stock picks on a regular basis, check out the performance of these guys' picks.