Kully Samra, branch director at Charles Schwab UK, gives his view on the US and highlights the sectors investors should be watching.

The recent correction in the US stock market has resulted in the ten economic sectors trading closer together than we typically see.

In fact, according to a measure put together by Ned Davis Research, stocks in the S&P 500 have been moving more in tandem—in financial jargon, higher correlation—than at almost any time over the past 30 years.
There are several factors contributing to this phenomenon, but chief among them in our opinion is the so-called risk trade.  

In essence, as uncertainty has grown in the market, investors have moved more and more money from higher-risk assets such as stocks to lower-risk assets such as US Treasuries, and back again—paying little attention to individual stocks and sectors in the process.

What does the increased correlation among sectors mean to you?

First, we think this is a short-term phenomenon, and that correlations will return closer to historical norms relatively soon. But while conditions remain like this, it's an opportunity to make sure your allocations among sectors are appropriate.

Those investing in the US should consider selling sectors that they're too concentrated in, and adding to underinvested sectors at lower prices. Additionally, this environment may suit investors who want to make small changes around the edges of their portfolios in an attempt to take advantage of economic developments. If you feel like you missed an opportunity to add to a sector you believe will outperform, for example, there will likely be another opportunity as risk preferences change.

For those investors, we see the information technology and health care sectors outperforming the broad market over the next several months.

The tech sector is traditionally viewed as a higher-beta group, meaning it typically moves with greater magnitude than the general market. However, even with the recent volatility, tech has performed roughly in line with the market. We have been touting this as one of the reasons to stick with the group despite the increased volatility.

We believe those who remained invested in tech will be rewarded with outperformance in the coming months, especially as the market bounces back from oversold levels. The health care sector had a rough start to the year as investors awaited the outcome of the health care reform bill.

The market hated the uncertainty of what could happen and, once that was removed with the passage of the bill, the sector started to perform relatively better. With investors now seemingly returning to the group, we continue to believe that outperformance is the likely course over the next few months.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, in our view the consumer discretionary and materials sectors will likely underperform the overall market in the coming months. Although we certainly believe that the US economy is now in expansion mode, growth is leveling off and the American shopper, in our view, remains cautious.

This caution, and the lack of available credit that helped fuel spending to start the decade, lead us to maintain our underperform rating on the consumer discretionary sector.

Much as we expected, the materials sector has underperformed the overall market over the past several months. Investors moved out of the sector as concerns arose about growth in China and the US, while the European debt crisis threatens to push at least some of the continent back into recession.

The resulting strength in the US dollar also threatens profits in the materials sector, which has likely hurt sentiment. Despite the pullback we've already seen, we believe there's still more to go, and we're retaining our underperform rating for the sector.

We also continue to hold a market perform rating on our other six sectors: consumer staples, energy, financials, industrials, telecom and utilities. These opinions are tactical in nature and can change quickly according to conditions in the market.