Sentiment is tense, investors are antsy, fundamentals are weak and volume trends are poor. At times like these, bulls will grasp for straws, and that is when they look at the economy for help.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the world economic system is in a hell of a fix due to the impact of so many loans gone bad, and it's not just because two of the biggest banks in England and the United States this week suffered another public beating.

Stocks have floated languidly this week like paper airplanes looking for a place to land. Leaders are energy, materials and utilities, while laggards were REITS, autoparts makers and regional banks.

Stocks continue to struggle, with no equity sectors standing out with significant strength as a new collapse in the banks overshadow everything else. Read on to find out how you can benefit.

In my three decades of investing, the only method that I have seen consistently work is to buy shares of companies that are fast-growing, cheap and innovative -- and are also in sectors, market cap groups or investment styles that the market currently favors. And I've got just such a play for you.

On the surface, the big rally on the first work day of the new Obama Administration appeared to be a mirror image of the massive down day that preceded it. Yet the internals were quite different.

I've got seven reasons why the market is NOT going up any time soon. Plus, I'll give you three trades to make money from the market now.

Commodities and financial companies were hit hard earlier this week, with major banks like Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) in particular getting shellacked.

When talking about the incoming Obama Administration's fiscal stimulus package, it's easy to take heart from the pragmatic brainiacs that are coming to run policy in Washington. Unfortunately, though, the executive branch only gets to propose legislation.

Historically, the first two weeks of January is often a harbinger of the rest of the year, so beware.

The corporate bond market suffered through one of the worst years in memory in 2008 as the credit markets worldwide collapsed. But from the detritus of the credit and equity markets of the past year, both investment-grade and high-yield corporate debt instruments appear in a strong position to experience a run-up in 2009. Within this sector, I have identified 5 corporate credits as my favorites for the year.

Heading into the new year, the financial media will be making much of the Obama administration's fiscal stimulus plan, infrastructure rebuilding and other news out of Washington. But what we really need to be paying attention to is the dawning realization among America's baby boomers that rising asset prices can no longer support debt-to-income ratios of nearly 140%. As that happens, a 20-year credit expansion and associated consumption binge will come to an end.

One reason that January is even more important now than ever has to do with the way that the boards of pension funds and endowments -- which control hundreds of billions of investment dollars -- operate. People on these boards are usually not actually experienced investment pros themselves, but rather business people, socialites, union members, political appointments and the like who are subject to a lot of whims and false ideas about the markets.

The fact that small caps are beginning to outperform large caps is a sign of a bigger set of events afoot in the global economy. Large companies are obviously multinationals, while smaller companies tend to focus on domestic U.S. sales. So whenever we see a big disparity in the performance between the two, it's a head's up that investors believe there is an imbalance in the world.

Before the credit crisis worsened, health care reform was one of the primary issues on the presidential campaign trail. Now, it gets barely a mention as other more pressing matters weigh on the country and President-Elect Obama's transition team. Still, by all indications, profound investments in the health care system are on the docket for next year.

President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team publicly discussed a stimulus package costing around $500 billion. More details are beginning to trickle out on exactly which areas of the economy stand to benefit.