Anyone who has followed the market crash understands the painful reality of the often-ignored disclaimer "past performance doesn’t guarantee future results." That said, investing isn’t dead — certain fundamental and technical criteria can still help find attractive companies. Historical tests show profitable investment strategies fall into seven major categories: profitability, valuation, cash flow, growth, capital allocation, price momentum, and red flags (risk).

The following study uses three simple rules that span fundamental, technical, and valuation criteria to find stocks that have beat (and lagged) a universe of roughly 2,200 large-cap stocks since December 1990. The final section lists current top- and bottom-ranked stocks based on these factors — potential long and short candidates for 2009. Unlike many fundamental strategies, this longshort approach encourages traders to not only buy top-ranked stocks, but sell bottom- ranked ones short. Given that the market began 2009 in a freefall, traders should definitely be emphasizing the short side.