Simply judging from the stock market's performance over the last couple of months, you might think the entire U.S. economy is teetering on the brink of disaster. In reality though, the sheer ugliness of the financial services and retail sectors is masking the other eight sectors of the market that, while certainly weaker than they once were, are actually holding up okay given the economic backdrop. The easiest way to illustrate this is to show earnings by sector for the last three years; 2006, 2007, and 2008. Keep in mind the 2008 are estimates based on nine months of actual reported profits and estimates of fourth quarter numbers.

As you can see from this graph, earnings in areas like telecom, healthcare, staples, or utilities are doing just fine and can withstand further weakness in 2009 and still more than justify some of the share price declines we have seen in recent months.

The selling has been indiscriminate but the business fundamentals are quite differentiated, depending on sector, which is one of the reasons that the U.S. equity market has not been this cheap relative to earnings, interest rates, and inflation since the early 1980's. It is a gift for long term investors.