U.S. Industry Rankings — how to read this page
Before picking individual stocks, the first question of a top-down approach is: where is money flowing right now? This page is not a sector performance table — it is a leadership discovery engine. Every stock on the NYSE, NASDAQ and AMEX is grouped by industry, and each industry is scored 0–100 to reveal where market leadership is emerging. Strong stocks rarely rise alone; they move in packs with their industry peers, so finding the leading industry first compresses your watchlist automatically.
How the Industry Score (0–100) is built
The Industry Score comes from a single number: the cap-weighted composite return of the industry's members. It uses exactly the same windows and weights as a stock's RS rating, so "a strong industry" and "a strong stock" are judged on one yardstick. The 3-month window carries the most weight — that is where quarterly leadership actually forms — while 1-month and 1-week confirm a recent turn and 6-month checks that the advance has roots.
(cap-weighted across members · √cap · single-name cap 15%)
Industry Score = percentile of that composite across industries × 100
Rank = composite return, descending
Leadership (RS density) · Breadth · Setup — computed and shown on the detail panel as evidence, never added to the score
Through July 2026 this score was a five-pillar sum (performance 35 + leadership 25 + breakouts 15 + breadth 15 + setup 10). The four auxiliary pillars leaned on judgments that daily OHLCV can only approximate — VCP contraction, pivot proximity, breakout follow-through — and on density ratios that are pure noise in a three-to-five-name industry, to the point where a group whose members were down 12% could post a near-perfect leadership pillar. The five-pillar ranking and the performance-only ranking correlated 0.90 anyway, so the extras mostly restated performance while adding failure modes. The score is now one number; leadership, breadth and setup are still computed and shown on the detail panel as evidence. The breakout pillar left the detail panel too on 2026-08-01 — most industries print zero on a given day, so there was nothing to read, and a breakout is better checked on the stock's own chart. The engine states one fact — the judgment stays with you.
This ranking is also the order of the screener's industry filter. The screener's industry list is ordered by this same Industry Score ranking (the rank number before each item) and lets you check several industries at once, so the top names here are exactly what you tick there. The "top-10 industries" cut used by the Market Environment page's leader basket is judged against this ranking too. Industry relative strength (industry RS, 1–99), which ranks groups on relative strength alone, is a separate auxiliary metric.
Sector ranking — one level above industry
The four cards at the top are sector ranks #1–#4. If the industry is "Semiconductor Equipment," the sector is "Technology" — which large block of the market money is moving into. Yahoo's U.S. sector taxonomy shares GICS's skeleton, so it maps 1:1 onto the SPDR Select Sector ETFs. We therefore rank the ETF's own return rather than re-synthesising one from constituents: it is the performance of an instrument you can actually buy, and it includes names outside our screening universe.
Sector RS = where that return falls in the day's all-stock RS distribution (1–99)
Technology XLK · Financials XLF · Health Care XLV · Consumer Disc. XLY · Staples XLP · Energy XLE
Industrials XLI · Materials XLB · Real Estate XLRE · Utilities XLU · Communication XLC
Sector RS is the same yardstick as a stock's RS. Sector RS 70 means that sector ETF outperformed 70% of U.S. stocks; an RS 85 stock sitting in an RS 40 sector climbed against the wind rather than with it. Click any industry and the detail panel prints its parent sector's RS and rank next to the industry name — a strong stock, in a strong industry, in a strong sector is the combination that holds up best.
Leadership (RS density) — evidence, not score
The "RS85+" figure and the leader chips on the detail panel measure how densely stocks rated RS 85 and above cluster inside an industry. A pile-up of top-RS names in one group is direct evidence that institutional capital is buying the whole industry, not just one story. It is not part of the score — density distorts too easily in a thin group. Read it as confirmation: several RS85+ names in a top-ranked industry means the advance is broad; none at all means a handful of stocks may be carrying the return.
ΔRank — the earliest signal of rotation
Read the three right-hand columns — this week · 3 weeks ago · 6 weeks ago — from left to right and the industry’s six-week trajectory is right there. 11 → 30 → 54 is a group that has climbed steadily for two months; 28 → 5 → 3 is a leader breaking down. Leadership handoffs show up in rank changes long before the #1 spot actually changes hands — industries jumping +5 or +8 out of mid-table are the prime candidates for the next leadership. The rank trend charts below lay the 60-session paths of the top 8 industries side by side, which makes the direction unmistakable when read together with the three columns.
From industry to stock — using the detail panel
Click any row to expand the score breakdown (how many percentage points each of the 1W / 1M / 3M / 6M windows contributed to the composite), the 60-session rank path, the breadth & setup panel, and every constituent of the industry sorted by RS — not a top-8 sample, all of them. Each row carries close, change, RS and its 20DMA extension — how far the close sits from its 20-day average, negative on a pullback. "Near pivot" means the close sits within 5% below the 20-day high — a buy point within reach. Take the names you find here to the screener and filter by industry to check the 8 trend criteria and the chart.
U.S. sector rotation follows the cycle
U.S. industry leadership rotates with the economic cycle: early recoveries favor semiconductors and consumer cyclicals, expansions favor industrials and software, late cycles favor energy and materials, and slowdowns push money into healthcare, staples and utilities. Watching which industries newly enter the top of this ranking tells you where the market thinks the cycle stands. When a long-time leader’s rank stalls and mid-table industries start climbing fast, a leadership change is often imminent — and stocks entered at the start of a new leading industry historically capture the largest moves.