Steel, Transports, Bio-Tech (Mid to small cap), Semi's (mid to small cap), gold/mining (mid to small cap) Least volatile would be: Domestic banks, Insurance, Media, Food, Drugs $COSTAverageMAN
That's a very deceptive question, so you may want to rephrase the question. If you are talking about Best PERFORMING industry sectors, over the last 52 weeks, the top 5 in top down (last column is performance vs S&P 500, middle column is relative sector strength): Tires & Rubber $6.4B 31 +108.0% Diversified Metals & Mining $30.3B 80 +29.6% Indep Pwr Prod&Energy Traders $66.1B -- +28.4% Electric Utilities $297.0B 37 +25.2% Integrated Telecommun Svs $398.7B 34 +25.0% Not what you'd expect huh? Here's even less expected, THE WORST Sectors from WORST to less worst: Homebuilding $44.0B 65 -39.0% Coal & Consumable Fuels $28.4B -- -38.0% Gold $19.9B 63 -37.1% Electronic Manufacturing Svs $22.5B -- -34.0% Leisure Facilities $1.8B 40 -24.5% Interesting? The WORST sectors are among the ones most pumped in the news. Gold is the 3rd from the bottom worst performing sector in the entire Stock Market for the last 52 weeks. Now, volatility is another animal, and that really depends on individual stocks. I don't know that there's a list of most volatile sectors, because every sector contains blue chip giants and tiny start ups... and there is simply no way to lump them together for volatility meaningfully.