TORONTO (Reuters) - With turbulence in the global economy and uncertainty about the health of US financial markets, investors in Canadian stocks are wasting no time chasing the hottest trend or dumping underperforming groups.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's financial services group, for instance, once seen as the go-to place for investors because of its attractive dividends and steady performance, is now more of a no-go zone.

"The dogs continue to be in the financial services sector. I don't think people are going to want to show huge overweightings in those stocks at quarter-end," said Rick Hutcheon, president and chief operating officer at RKH Investments.

"My guess would be that if people have been getting out of a sector, they have been getting out of financials."

Despite a recent surge that has helped Toronto's financial stocks rise from the group's March 17 low, they are still down 12 percent on the year.

Fall-out from the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, which spurred big writedowns at several Canadian banks, sparked the exodus.

Bank of Montreal, suffering from capital markets-related writedowns and burgeoning provisions for bad loans, is down 21 percent so far this year, and National Bank of Canada is off 12 percent, after buying about C$2 billion in troubled asset-backed commercial paper from its mutual funds and clients last August.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is actually the best-performing of the big banks, down only 8.2 percent, despite taking more than C$3 billion in first-quarter pretax charges and acknowledging that further writedowns may be needed.

With the banks on the downswing, investors have been deepening their love affair with mining companies, especially gold miners, and oil and gas stocks.

Gold, which is still within striking distance of its March 17 record high of $1,030.80 an ounce, has awakened the gold bugs, who have once again found value in companies such as Barrick Gold , the world's biggest producer, and mid-tier producer Agnico-Eagle Mines .

"Gold has attracted the lion's share of the attention right now," Mr. Hutcheon said.

"It's the hot sector and people perceive it as a shelter from financial uncertainty or crisis and is also a sector that has appeal for some people worried about inflation."

But David Wolf, chief economist at Merrill Lynch Canada, advises staying away from all of the most heavily weighted groups on the Toronto Stock Exchange's key S&P/TSX composite index.

Just three sectors - energy, materials and financials - make up 77 percent of the TSX index, which Mr. Wolf notes "is the highest proportion in the developed world."

"We're still wary of all three...we see froth in the commodity sectors and believe that worse is yet to come among Canadian financials, particularly the banks," he wrote in a note to clients.

Instead, he recommends more "defensive sectors" such as health care and consumer staples. His picks among Canadian stocks with market caps of more than C$2 billion are Research In Motion, Rogers Communications, Shoppers Drug Mart, Alimentation Couche-Tard , Manitoba Tel and WestJet Airlines.

Meanwhile, Paul Harris, portfolio manager at Avenue Investment Management, is bucking the trends and searching for value in the beaten-down financials, technologies and real estate sectors.

"Investment managers are not smart people," he said. "They tend to be followers as opposed to leaders. The easy thing for me is to say 'I'm not going to touch those things,' the harder thing to say is 'I think we should be looking at those things and let me go and do my work'."