Among the most useful tools for individual investors available at Investor's Business Daily is it's Daily Graph's Industry Groups service. It tracks the financial and technical performance of 197 industry groups on a daily, weekly, monthly, and multi-month basis.

Although I rarely, if ever, invest in anything other than the leading firms in the leading industries, I do like to know what industries are performing poorly. Anyone who has read the news lately could easily guess that with oil prices at (or near) record highs, oil stocks are performing very well. In fact, US exploration and production companies occupy the number 1 slot, Drilling holds the #3, Field Services have #6, Oil Machinery is at #7 and two other oil & gas related industries hold the 9th and 10th places. This has been the case for most of the last three months.

This being the case, it follows that industries for whom oil and gas is a major expense would be hurting. Not surprisingly, then, airlines occupy the 197th slot on IBD's list- dead last. They have held this position for the last three months, down from the 97th position just six months ago.

Now what did come as a surprise was the industry occupying the 196th place in the list of 197. It is one that is nowhere near as dependent on oil and gas prices as an input or factor of production as are airlines. It is one whose leaders have survived well over 100 years but has recently seen repeated layoffs and downsizing. It is one that is facing an onslaught of technologically-enabled competitors, new entrants, and substitutes. It is the Newspaper industry. They are #196 now, and were in the same spot last week. Three months ago they were at # 188 and six months ago they were at 165. Only one industry with five or more incumbents is performing worse than newspapers in that time span- mortgage lenders!

That means that right now oil and gas are at the top, airlines hold the bottom slot for the week, mortgage lenders hold the title for the last six months, and newspapers are right there with them. In short, it seems that the internet is to newspapers what OPEC is to airlines and what 0%-down sub-prime loans have become for the mortgage lenders: hell on wheels. My prediction is that by year's end, oil prices will decline (though not by much), airlines will rebound (though not by much), the financial crises will abate (again not by much) and that newspapers will hit rock bottom- and deservedly so.