Monday Sector Leaders: Materials, Utilities

Looking at the sectors faring best as of midday Monday, shares of Materials companies are outperforming other sectors, losing just 0.1%. Within that group, Sigma-Aldrich (NASD: SIAL) and International Paper (NYSE: IP) are two of the day's stand-outs, showing a gain of 33.5% and 0.8%, respectively. Among the high volume ETFs, one ETF closely following materials stocks is the Materials Select Sector SPDR ETF (AMEX: XLB), which is up 0.1% on the day, and up 10.70% year-to-date. Sigma-Aldrich, meanw...