In his latest article for Morningstar, Validea CEO John Reese looks at top stocks from the service sector — an area of the economy that he says is faring better than many realize.

“Service-type companies, and the service sector as a whole, have become the real bellwethers of U.S. economic activity,” Reese writes. “And lately, if you listen to the pundits, you’d think that the service sector is in dire straits, with fears of another recession — or worse — having dominated the headlines for the past couple months. But guess what? The real, hard data from the service sector hasn’t been that bad. In fact, some of it has been downright good. According to the Institute for Supply Management, the service sector has expanded for 21 straight months. And in August — a month when fear seemed to be everywhere — the sector not only expanded, but did so at a faster pace than it did in July.”

Reese uses his Guru Strategies — each of which is based on the approach of different investing great — to scour the market for some of the top service sector stocks right now. Among the five he looks at in the article: Advance Auto Parts, which gets approval from both his James O’Shaughnessy-based model and his Peter Lynch-inspired strategy.