It is very easy to make money in this market despite the headlines. Using options to capitalize on volatility combined with a long/short strategy can result in powerful returns.

For example, taking equal positions of my Top 10 Stocks for 2009 while at the same time selling equal amounts of my Top 10 Stocks to Avoid would generate a return of more than 10% year to date.

Given that trends once in place stay in place for some time, I am quite confident that these positions will be winners throughout the year. It is not too late to set up your trades using these suggestions as a guide.

At long last -- to this Democrat's view anyway -- Barack Obama is the president of the United States. Now, it's time to gaze into our crystal ball.

Obama has many things on his plate, including fixing the economy. Lots of people are trying to pick the winners and losers. Here are my guesses. Keep in mind that it may take several years for the impact of Obama's policies to be felt.

Defense: Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC) and Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN) will benefit from the spending needed to replace worn-out military equipment from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama's push to improve health care technology. The defense contractors over the past few years have become huge government IT contractors and are experts at systems integration. Each have plunged by double-digits over the past year.

Healthy living: Call me an optimist but I expect the Obama administration to push healthier living and for greater control of health care. Hain Celestial Group Inc. (NASDAQ: HAIN), the largest provider of organic food, seems a likely beneficiary. Also, it's hard to see how he is going to be able to digitize health care records without the involvement of health insurers such as Cigna Corp. (NYSE: CI). Hain is down 42% over the past 52 weeks, while Cigna has plunged more than 70%.

Now that Senator Obama is President-elect Obama, what will he do with the economy and how can you profit from it? One way is to look for stocks that will benefit from a part of his proposed economic stimulus plan -- the creation of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that would spend $60 billion over 10 years on roads, bridges, ports, airports and rail lines.

One company that could benefit from this investment would be Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC), which engineers municipal infrastructure. The stock is down 57% in the last year due to concerns about whether states and cities will build new infrastructure in the face of a crumbling economy. But does the Jacobs' stock drop mean it will go up now that Obama is President?

If its earnings estimates are credible, I would say Jacobs could be a good investment. That's because the stock trades at a Price/Earnings to Growth Ratio (PEG) of 0.55 and a stock whose PEG is below 1.0 looks undervalued to me. Jacobs' 0.5 PEG is based on a P/E ratio of 11.4 on earnings growth of 20.8% to EPS of $4.05 in the fiscal year ending September 2009.

And if Obama enacts his infrastructure plan in 2009, Jacobs' earnings prospects could brighten even more.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Jacobs Engineering securities.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this report highlighted where the success lies in this market: energy and petroleum.

Fluor's (NYSE: FLR) (Cramer's Take) a monster. It shows you that what has hurt the other companies, particularly Chicago Bridge & Iron (NYSE: CBI) (Cramer's Take), is pure execution.

This gigantic beat also serves to remind us of the big dichotomy. You are either in the energy and petroleum products game or you are in a lot of games that don't work.

It's not easy for these companies, some of which have lived off the duress of state and local governments, including Shaw (NYSE: SGR) (Cramer's Take) and to a certain extent Aecom (NYSE: ACM) (Cramer's Take) and URS (NYSE: URS) (Cramer's Take), to become oil-and-gas plays.

The only ones that have transcended it beside Fluor are Foster Wheeler (NASDAQ: FWLT) (Cramer's Take) and Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC) (Cramer's Take), and the only reason you would really know that is longevity. I remember in the early 1980s when FLR and then FWC would compete directly for all of the huge projects after the second oil shock.