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Chart of The Day: Oil Price Spikes and Sector Performance...

From Morgan Stanley's European analysts, a look at the relative performance of various sectors in the 6 months after (in dark blue) an oil price spike.

Fair warning for U.S.  investors: This report is based on European data, but I'm presuming the impact is similar for U.S. sectors.

Bottom Line:

Energy, health care and consumer staples perform best. Utilities, telecomms, industrials and financials are NOT negatively impacted after a sharp oil spike.

As one would expect, though, the consumer discretionary (cyclicals) sector suffers the most because consumer discretionary dollars are directed to the higher cost of energy-related goods in lieu of discretionary purchases.

And, on balance, European stocks suffered losses in the -10% to -15% range 6 months before and after oil price spikes, suggesting that stocks in general suffer when sharp oil price spikes blindside the markets.

S&P 500 Historical Sector Weightings: 1990 - 2010

Above are the historical sector weightings for the S&P 500. Technology currently has the biggest weighting in the S&P 500 at 19.2%. This is the highest weighting the Tech sector has had since the Internet bubble burst in 2000.

After falling all the way down to just 8.9% at the March 2009 lows, the Financial sector's weighting in the S&P 500 now ranks 2nd at 14.4%.

Health Care, Consumer Staples, Energy, and Industrials are the other 4 sectors with a weighting of more than 10%. The Consumer Discretionary sector is close to 10% at 9.8%. From 1998 to 2007, the Consumer Discretionary sector was bigger than the Consumer Staples sector.

When the bear market hit in 2007, Consumer Staples overtook Consumer Discretionary, but the spread has tightened to about two percentage points recently. If the bull market continues, we'll likely see Discretionary overtake Staples once again.

While the Materials sector gets a lot of attention in the media, especially because it has the gold stocks, it's important to remember that it only makes up 3.5% of the S&P 500. The Utilities sector is even bigger than Materials.

Chart and analysis courtesy of Bespoke Investment Group