With only a few exceptions, the last several days have been a little flat for stocks with a slightly bullish bias. Of course, assuming your portfolio closely mirrors the overall market, you probably already know that.

Interestingly - though not surprisingly - something similar can be said about the sectors. Only one has decisively outpaced the market over the last few days, although a couple more may deserve an honorable mention. Overall though, we haven't seen any new likely sector trends to examine.

With that in mind, let's use today as an opportunity to look at some relative sector strength trends, and possible sector rotation.

The graphic below is the same as usual - the percentage returns for all the major sector indices for various time frames.

The one clear winner that might be enjoying a revival? The transportation stocks. They're close to leading the way again, after taking a pretty big hit last summer. We suspect this will be a nice long-term trend, as the transportation names tend to stay in motion once they're put into motion. The only potential pitfall for the Dow Jones Transportation Average is resistance at 4962. We topped near there twice in 2006, and have yet to actually climb above that mark this time around.

Dow Jones Transportation Average - Weekly


And obviously energy stocks and the basic materials sector are back in their bullish groove.

The notable laggards are the technology and consumer goods sectors. The technology lull started in mid-November; the stocks in that group just can't get anything going thanks to Google, Cisco, AMD, Dell, etc. If it were just a two-week problem, we'd just chalk it up to volatility. However, the technology indices have been on the lower half of our grid for the better part of a year (a nice Q3 rally salvaged what would otherwise be a horrific year).

Dow Jones Technology Index - Weekly


Rounding out the bearish end of rankings is the consumer goods sector (staples). However, we still feel the longer-term results from this sector may trump the short-term weakness. You're sacrificing returns for stability and consistency. There are worse things to deal with.

Sector Performance Ranking - Sorted by 2-Week Return


In terms of rotation, we still see upside potential in healthcare (a point we made above). These names lagged in most of the time frames over the last year, but our rotation intuition says they're getting ready to work their way up to the higher side of this grid. The same can be said about transportation stocks, though their hiatus was only during the middle part of last year - they actually still have a pretty solid 52-week return figure.

Anything else worth mentioning? Yes. The recovery of the basic materials stock is a surprise....sort of. We were counting on tempered inflation to ease the pressure there. However, as the Fed said yesterday, inflation is not exactly tempered just yet. We have a little faith in that resurgence. The dominance of the cyclical stocks isn't a surprise. With the economy still essentially 'strong', consumers are still generally spending as they wish. Apparently the lull in the housing market has yet to affect most of those underlying stocks.

Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.