With today's release of December federal budget numbers comes good news and bad news. The good news is that federal spending is not growing very much and is shrinking relative to GDP. The bad news is that revenue growth has also slowed, and the deficit continues to be well north of $1 trillion per year.

The change of the calendar year last week also ushered in some big changes in relative strength for S&P 500 sectors.  Most investors are already well aware of the big improvement in the performance of the Financial stocks relative to the S&P 500 this year.  Even after this surge, though, they have a ways to go before getting back to even with the market.