You can use industry averages and component lists to help find which industries continued to perform well in down markets. Take a look at which industries remained strong during the market decline from early February 2001 to early April 2001. To do this, you’ll need to sort the performance of the industry averages during this specific time frame.
Select the "Hemscott Industry Averages" WatchList and then Jump to the symbol SP-500. The SP-500 index is not part of our industry average WatchList, but will give us a frame of reference for market performance. To find out how the industry averages performed from February to April 2001, you’ll need to run a Custom Date Sort. Press the letter C on your keyboard and your cursor will turn into a cross-hair. Now click and drag the cursor from the top in February to the low in early April (see example below).
You can use the slider bars to fine tune the start and end dates of your sort. Also notice that the "% Change" option button has been selected.
Once the custom date sort process is complete, you can see how every industry performed during the market slide. Click on the Descending option button to sort the list from the best to the worst performers, then press the Home key on your keyboard to go to the top of the list.
In the example here, you can see that the Music & Video Stores (MG744) industry was up over 30% while the market was sliding. Auto Dealerships (MG745) also performed well. Both MG744 and MG745 are part of the main industry group "Specialty Retail". Since both of these sub-industries were strong during the decline, let’s see what stocks in Specialty Retail were driving the industry. If you click on MG744 it becomes the Active Symbol. Now right-click on the industry name and a menu pops up.
Click on "Change WatchList to Industry Components". This takes you to the "Specialty Retail" WatchList and asks if you want to recalculate the Percent Change Sort, click on Yes. You can now see the performance of each individual stock in the Specialty Retail industry from 02/01/01 to 04/04/01.
Another feature on the right-click menu, "Plot Industry Comparison", plots a comparison graph of each symbol’s main industry as you spacebar through the charts. You can use the symbols INDUSTRY and SUB-IND when you plot a Comparison Graph or a Relative Strength graph so that no matter which stock you jump or spacebar to, its industry or sub-industry will always be used.