The reason this is so difficult is that sector leadership appears to be a largely random matter from market cycle to market cycle. For example, it hardly ever is the case that the same sector leads two successive bull markets. Nor is just the reverse the case: The last-place finisher in one bull market is rarely the leader in the subsequent one.

In fact, try as they might, researchers haven't been able to detect any pattern in the sector ranks from one market cycle to the next. Read related column.

This means that it probably easier to know what will not lead the next bull market: financials and energy, the two sectors that dominated the last bull market.

Still, difficult-to-read tea leaves haven't stopped me before, so here goes...

To come up with a forecast, I turned to the investment newsletters with the best long-term track records, according to the Hulbert Financial Digest. If any group of advisers possess an early inkling of which sector will lead the next bull market, the editors of these top performing newsletters should be part of it.

So the first step I took was to compile a list of the stocks recommended by several of the newsletters that had beaten a buy-and-hold over the long term. Each stock on the list I came up with were recommended by at least three of the newsletters that beat the stock market over the trailing 10-year period, the trailing 15 years, or the trailing 20 years.

But I didn't stop there. In my next step, I eliminated from consideration any of the stocks on this list that were also recommended by even one of the newsletters that failed to beat a buy-and-hold over the trailing 10-, 15-, or 20-year periods.

These dual conditions combined to create a very high hurdle indeed. Here's why: No matter how compelling a stock might appear to the market-beating newsletters, chances are that at least one market laggard will like it too.

Consider General Electric Co. (GE: GE 18.86, +0.52, +2.8%) , for example. It is at the top of the hit parade of stocks that are currently recommended by newsletters that have beaten the stock market over the past 20 years. In fact, no fewer than six of the 12 newsletters in this select group are recommending GE be purchased.

But, at the same time, GE also is the most recommended stock among the market laggards: Of the 30 on the Hulbert Financial Digest monitored list that are behind a buy-and-hold for performance over the past 20 years, five currently are recommending the stock.

So while GE may very well turn out to be a great investment, I eliminated it from consideration for purposes of forecasting which sector will lead the next bear market.

My final step was to categorize the stocks that survived my dual filters into the 10 major sector classifications. There were just three: consumer staples, industrials and materials.

So my forecast is that these sectors will be among the best-performing in the next bull market.

If my forecast is right, it would be a big shift from the sector leadership ranks of recent bull markets. The last time the consumer staples sector led a bull market, according to Ned Davis Research, was in the late 1980s; the firm calculates that in the most recent bull market, this sector was in last place among the 10 major sector categories.

It's been even longer -- since the late 1970s, in fact -- since the industrials sector led a bull market, according to Ned Davis Research. It was in fifth place among the 10 major sector categories in the most recent bull market.

Finally, according to Ned Davis Research, there has been no bull market since the early 1970s in which the Materials sector was at the top of the leader board. In the most recent bull market, it was in third place out of 10 categories.

The advent of exchange-traded funds makes it incredibly easy to invest in any of these three sectors. Here are several:

Mark Hulbert is the founder of Hulbert Financial Digest in Annandale, Va. He has been tracking the advice of more than 160 financial newsletters since 1980.