Below are the 20 hottest ETFs (excluding leveraged funds) at the close of February, based on the 6 month performance. These are not 'buy' recommendations or aggregate portfolios for investment. My favorite way to use this list is as a) to get a sense for the biggest intermediate trends and b) as potential short-term trading opportunities.

If you are comfortable using your own technical analysis that is the preferred way. Trend lines and support/resistance levels are some of the simplest and most powerful tools for analyzing price charts. An investor could also use proprietary trading signals combined with risk management techiniques such as those I profiled in-depth here.

By David Russell

Republic Airways (RJET) ripped higher on Friday, and the bulls think that it still has room to run.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…the airline industry? After getting dinged in the economic meltdown, it now looks like airlines and related ETFs taxiing onto the runway and just about cleared for takeoff.

The airline industry has had its fair share of struggles as millions of Americans holed up in their homes for less-than-exotic “staycations” in lieu of expensive and time-consuming air travel. But are the industry’s fortunes changing?