Sub-sectors ...
I got in the habit of following those during the bear market that started in 2008.
There was a lot of divergence in the sub-sectors within the huge Financials sector. One could be Long some and Short others and doing just fine.
People were losing houses so you couldn't make money investing in financial activities there, but people had to live somewhere so, instead, all the positive financial activity was in the rental business. They are both financial activities but an institution that does one goes up, and the one doing the other goes down, and the one that does both stays flat.
Likewise during a recession, take the money out of stocks that do well during strong economies and use it to buy stock of companies that do job training. A friend told me that many years ago. He had a relative that did that every recession. It's easy to get all the recession dates and lists of companies that do job training. He was right on, and it works every time. After the fact it seemed obvious.