Top Rocket Stocks for Week of Nov. 26

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.5% last week and the S&P 500 erasing nearly all of its gains for the year, stocks certainly did look ugly last week. Historically speaking, the holiday-shortened trading week has yielded slight gains for the major averages, but increased credit fears erased any hopes of that.

On Wednesday, we saw large put-buying in the Financial Select Sector ETF(XLF Quote) with the December $27 and $25 puts. These buyers appear to be making a large bet that the financials still are heading lower.

With the hedge fund industry currently at its lowest net-long positions in five years, any snapback rally could be powerful.

In this week's Rocket Stocks portfolio, I highlight some companies that are generally independent of the economy, that is to say, they tend to perform better when the economy slows.

Before we get to this week's picks, however, let's take a look at last week's. Even though the market was down for the week, last week's Rocket Stocks eked out a few winners. Here's a quick take on how each fared:

• Dick's Sporting Goods(DKS Quote) ended the week up 7%.
• Target(TGT Quote), up 5.9% for the week.
• Level 3 Communications(LVLT Quote) up 2.5%.
• Applera(ABI Quote), down 2%.
• eBay(EBAY Quote), down 2.4%
• Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote), down 3.3%.
• China Sunergy(CSUN Quote), up more than 5% on Tuesday but ending the week down 3.4%.

• Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), down 3.6%.

• ValueClick(VCLK Quote), down 4.6%.
• Aluminum Corp. of China(ACH Quote), up as much as 2.8% Tuesday but ending the week down 4.6%.

Now on to the Rocket Stocks for the Week of Nov. 26-30.

First up is Google(GOOG Quote), one of the most economic-independent stocks around. In fact, marketing studies have shown that advertising actually increases in a slowing economy, and with more adverting dollars flowing away from "old media" into "new media," this trend could especially help Google.