Four years ago, at the tail end of The Great Recession, anyone brave enough to foresee $100 a barrel crude would likely have picked energy stocks as big winners. Yet here we are and here they are, garnering cautious investor interest as perennial laggards.

The S&P 500 is up 146 percent from the closing low of March 9, 2009, while the Energy Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLE) has managed “only” 114 percent. Most of the ground was lost in the last year and a bit. Since February 2012, the S&P 500 has rallied 22 percent, twice as much as the XLE.

Blame worries about the pace of global growth and, most damagingly for energy investors, the Chinese slowdown now entering its second year. The US production boom from unconventional oil and gas plays has produced plenty of winners, but it’s also saddled some losers with unsustainable debt while posing the threat of an oil  glut akin to the one that until recently plagued natural gas.

But despite long losing streaks in both 2011 and 2012, the sector has finally broken through to trade at its post-crash highs — while the broader market is setting daily records and is as overheated as it’s been in years. This feels like a bit of a trap, and it would certainly be easier to buy after a meaningful correction.

But the market’s job isn’t to make things easier, and he who hesitated has lost out all this year.

So while ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is still attempting to break out of its range, Conservative Portfolio mainstay Chevron (NYSE: CVX) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) are already there.

Growth Portfolio favorites EOG Resources (NYSE: EOG) and Cabot Oil & Gas (NYSE: COG) have been consolidating in bullish fashion as well after shooting higher on strong quarterly results. So the charts have a hopeful tale to tell to anyone willing to overlook the unsustainable pace of the recent gains.

Crude has cooperated by weathering the commodity slump a lot better than gold, silver, copper or corn. Brent refused to drop below $100 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate held above $90. Cheaper crude has become such a consensus call amid the apparent glut of US inventories that it may not come to pass until enough bears change their tune.

How does an investor deal with these divergences and contradictions? By exercising patience and discipline, even if these virtues haven’t been much in evidence lately.  With sentiment extremely bullish, this market isn’t going to run away to the upside without putting so many recent converts to a test or two first.

The family portfolios I manage hold just two of the stocks recommended by The Energy Strategist: Cabot and US Silica Holdings (NYSE: SLCA) , a Best Buy in our Aggressive Portfolio. In both cases, I find the fundamentals so compelling that I’m willing to ride out a near-term correction. And while I’d also like to own EOG along with latest portfolio recommendation Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK) I’m loath to add equity exposure until some froth has been skimmed from this market.

In any case, the financial stocks I’ve recommended elsewhere have been outperforming the energy sector handily. Until that changes, until the energy space actually displays the market leadership it has seldom exercised in recent years, there’s no sense overweighting it.

Pay for results and value, not the hope that it’s energy’s turn. Markets, and especially extended bull markets, don’t play fair.